Lambton and Chatham-Kent students and schools are going head-to-head, and for more than pizza, in the latest library reading challenge.
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Clash Cup trophies are being crafted for top-ranked classrooms in this year’s sophomore, Clash of the Classrooms Feb. 5 to March 8, presented by the Sarnia-Lambton and Chatham-Kent library systems, said Lambton County Library’s Vanitia Campbell.
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“We’re hoping that it becomes like the Stanley Cup of reading trophies in Sarnia-Lambton and Chatham-Kent,” she said.
The concept is simple. Classrooms and schools sign up, read as much as they canand life for prizes.
Schools that read the most minutes per capita — tracked via the Beanstack app — get cash for libraries and/or learning commons investment, and classrooms that log the most-read minutes overall get pizza parties.
The prizes, divided evenly between the two jurisdictions, are again up for grabs by secondary, elementary and home school groups, Campbell said.
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But after Chatham-Kent outparticipated Lambton last year — with 87 classrooms at 63 schools taking part, versus 48 classrooms at 26 schools in Lambton — Campbell said her competitive spirit sparked.
“We found out later that we each had an internal competition with each other that we didn’t tell each other about,” she said of the two library systems. “So a Clash Cup kind of formalizes (that) competition.”
One trophy goes to the elementary school that reads the most, and the other to the top-performing high school, regardless of which area they’re in.
The trophies will be displayed at library branches nearest the winning schools, she said.
“That will be earning the school. . . and also the library system some bragging rights,” Campbell said.
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Overall, Clash of Classrooms went well in its first year involving the two jurisdictions, she said, with more than 750,000 minutes read by 3,300 readers.
“That’s just an absolutely amazing bit of literacy,” she said, adding she’d be excited to hit one million minutes in 2024.
Lambton started its own, similar program that tracked books read in 2019. It expanded to include Chatham-Kent in 2023 after there was interest from the southern municipality.
Overall, the program is about making reading fun, and inspiring the invaluable life skill for its own sake, Campbell said.
“We recognize, with the pandemic, that there was maybe some learning loss and there are some challenges with literacy” after extensive online learning, she said.
“This is really our way of trying to help partner with schools and partner with teachers to take reading from being a chore. . . and making it something that’s fun and competitive.”
Details and sign-up instructions are available at llibrary.ca/clash.
Clash of the Classrooms 2023
- 3,300 readers
- 89 schools (26 in Lambton)
- 135 classes (48 in Lambton)
- 750,000 minutes read
Source: Lambton County Library
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