Boost your learners’ reading with the Bug Club Reading Challenge
The holiday break is nearly here and your thoughts may be turning to how you can ensure your learners continue their reading practice at home and continue to make progress in their learning.
We all know the best way to get children wanting to read more is to give them books that will get them excited about the stories they are reading. This is where Bug Club comes in!
With over 500 books (printed and eBooks) to choose from across all Phonic phases, from a range of genres and covering topics that all children will love – plus access to a brand-new online library, the Reading Corner – there is a book for everyone.
Bug Club’s online reading world allows you to allocate eBooks to each pupil to read at home and see the results in the online tracking tool.
Children can access every eBook from wherever they are, either have it read to them using the Read to Me functionality*, or can read themselves or to a parent and complete Bug Club quizzes along the way to earn rewards they’ll love spending in their very own treehouse or sticker factory!
Start the Bug Club Reading Challenge
Whether you’re a Bug Club school or not, everyone can take part in the Bug Club Reading Challenge. And the best bit? It’s completely free to enter! Here’s how you can get involved:
- Log in to your Bug Club subscription on ActiveLearn (if you’re not a Bug Club customer, you can sign up to a free two-month trial and try it out with your learners).
- Upload all your learners taking part in the challenge into ActiveLearn – to help with this, watch our how-to videos on YouTube.
- Download free Bug Club Bookmarks and give all your learners their own passwords to their very own personalised Bug Club online reading world to access their eBooks from home.
- Allocate eBooks to your students to read over the holidays in the resources area. The number of books you allocate as part of the challenge is up to you – you know your learners the best! For help with this, watch our how-to videos on YouTube.
- Your budding readers can now start reading straight away!
- Track your learners’ progress in your online assessment dashboard.
- Download our Bug Club certificate and give one to every reader that completes the challenge.
More Bug ideas to get your learners excited to read this term
There are lots of other ways you can encourage your young learners to get reading this term, and throughout the holidays. Here are some suggestions:
- Download these Bug Club character templates for some fun end-of-term activities.
- Explore the new Alphablocks books and get your learners practising their phonic sounds with these activity sheets.
- Ask your learners to choose their favourite Bug Club character and write a story featuring this character.
- Encourage your learners to give each book a review – either write it down in a log or they can tell their parents. Which one will be their favourite?
- Get your pupils to put on a play and read one of the Bug Club Plays to Act books – download the fun animal masks in the Classroom Goodies section on ActiveLearn to help the performance!
Happy Bug Club Reading!
Learn more
Find out more about Bug Club. And if you’re not yet a Bug Club customer, don’t forget you can sign up to a free two-month trial and try it out with your learners.
* The Read to Me functionality is only available for selected titles.
Suzie Williams
Suzie Williams is part of the international schools team at Pearson. A graduate of the universities of Salford and Strathclyde in the UK, she has worked in education for over 20 years, is a former primary school governor, heads up the Pearson international schools blog and produces and directs the annual Pearson International School Leaders Conferences.