I just wanted to chime in with my concerns about this program... There have been a number of studies on rewarding children to try to get them to do something. They almost uniformly show that children will comply, but both long- and short-term effects can be negative. For the book-it program, for example, kids might choose shorter stories in the short term. Over the long term, they may actually lose interest in reading (because they were reading for pizza, not because they like to read). More info is here:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/ngrp.htm
Here's a quote from that site:
"But what is the effect on these students' choice of reading (hint: look for a run on short books with large type), their comprehension of what they've read, and above all, their attitude toward reading when the program is over? The late educational psychologist John Nicholls speculated several years ago that the likely result of this program would be "a lot of fat kids who don't like to read."
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/ngrp.htm
Here's a quote from that site:
"But what is the effect on these students' choice of reading (hint: look for a run on short books with large type), their comprehension of what they've read, and above all, their attitude toward reading when the program is over? The late educational psychologist John Nicholls speculated several years ago that the likely result of this program would be "a lot of fat kids who don't like to read."
