BrainFreeze

Over Winter Break, 606 students signed up for and took on the challenge to read 20 minutes per day at home with our new online BrainFreeze Reading Challenge. Even students who have been struggling with reading were excited at the chance to receive prizes; it was fantastic to get emails from parents sharing their child’s drive to read more than they ever have before.

In total, BrainFreeze Reading Challenge online participants read a whopping 58,052 minutes over Winter Break! Readers answered 413 extra BrainGain questions, sharing interesting facts from and parts of the stories they read as well as new words they learned during their time reading over Winter Break. The two readers who challenged themselves to read the most this break achieved over 1,000 minutes of reading each!

More students in Michigan, California, and New York challenged themselves to read than in any other state. Congratulations to everyone who participated in the ThinkStretch BrainFreeze Reading Challenge. We’d like to congratulate Abbot Elementary in Michigan, in particular. After having fantastic success this past summer in overcoming summer learning loss with ThinkStretch, 40 students from Abbot challenged themselves to log minutes online this winter as well.

Great job to all participants. Keeping your brains warmed up over Winter Break will help when you return to school! The following prize winners were drawn randomly from students who logged their minutes online:

1st Prize (iPod Touch) went to Jaxon J., a 1st grader in Michigan

2nd Prize (Kindle) went to Abby L., a 5th grader in Michigan

BrainGain Prize (iPod Nano) was Priscilla M., a 7th grader in Maryland

Sometimes students need a little motivation to keep reading when they take a break from school. A chance to challenge themselves online and win prizes turned out to be great motivation. We’ve received emails from teachers and parents telling us how much their students enjoyed participating in the first ever online BrainFreeze Reading Challenge and are excited to have seen such great success. We’re looking forward to rolling out a summer reading challenge online for schools and students with our summer learning program to motivate students throughout summer months, when summer learning loss is a significant challenge every student faces. Stay tuned for more details!

We’re excited to offer new 2013 BrainFreeze packets. For your classroom or for your whole school, you can help students return to school in the new year ready to learn new skills.

To get the most out of your BrainFreeze packets, we have a few classroom tips to help keep the young brains in your classroom warm over winter break: 

Send the BrainFreeze packet home the day BEFORE break begins. Sometimes backpacks do not get opened again until the night before school starts back up!

Host a school contest. Reward the class that turns in the most BrainFreeze packets with a popsicle party.

Offer a special class privilege to EVERY class that has ALL its students return a completed BrainFreeze packet—lunch in the classroom, extra recess time, free computer time, or their names read on the loudspeaker.

Offer a token reward to each student who turns in a completed BrainFreeze packet silly pencils or cool erasers.

If you haven’t gotten your BrainFreeze packet yet, download BrainFreeze now!

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