The Fire Up Program

Read more about implementing the Fire Up program at your school in this article from the October 2007 issue of Library Sparks magazine.

Order bulletin board dragon, scales, dragon progress tracker, reading record logs, and bookmarks from
Upstart at Highsmith!
Search the site with "Fire Up with Reading"

St. James Episcopal Day School ~ Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

After reading the Fired Up book the first week in March to second grade, we decided to write the title of the book they read that week on a scale.  It was originally only the second grade, but the trend caught on like wildfire and now grades 1-5 are blasting through scales. It's not a competition among grades, but rather a school-wide incentive to make the dragon grow.  The kids have until Monday, March 31st to add reading scales.  It now is across TWO bulletin boards and the tail is curled in a loop so that we stay on the bulletin board rather than get on the painted walls (greatly frowned upon by our custodian).

I had to quickly make more scales since they went through two packs in a week and I had to take down the Dr. Seuss interactive "Name That Seuss Book" board in order to extend the dragon.  

 I'd say it's a success! ~ Rebecca Richardson, Librarian

MacArthur Elementary School ~ Green Bay, Wisconsin

I made a few simple dragons for the LMC to get the students excited about making a dragon head for their classroom dragon to be used in the Chinese New Year parade.  For one, I made a Styrofoam dragon head and attached a colorful children's tunnel and for the other I just enlarged a dragon head on cardboard and sat it in front of a slanted LMC table covered with a green tablecloth painted with scales (this way they could see how any cloth would work for the body). I mentioned to some classes that hoola hoops under a cloth would give it shape.

    

St. Catharine Catholic School, Spring Lake, New Jersey

Amherst St. Elementary School ~ Nashua, New Hampshire

Our kids are inspired by Mrs. Skorupski.  They loved the first book, but Fire Up is their favorite.  We read it during Chinese New Year week.  We started an all-school dragon with the kit from Upstart.  A child got one scale for every hour that they read outside of school.  We quickly ran out of scales and then made our own.  The dragon’s head was outside the library.  His body snaked down the hall, past the office, the front door, and all the way down the front hall past the kindergarten rooms.  Soon he reached the cafeteria!

Even the Intensive Needs kids participated in the dragon program.  Their paraprofessionals filled out their reading logs with the hours they read to the children individually.  These students stamped their names on their scales.  A blind student stamped her name in Braille. We had over 2000 hours of reading.  The kids brought their parents in to show off their scales.  At the end of the year we had a dragon celebration--a Fire Up Dragon Party that we held to celebrate our reading success.  Our principal was leaving for a new job, so we dressed her up like a dragon and she led a parade of kids around the school, inside and out.  We had a dragon pinata and ice cream.

Thanks for a creative idea that really got our kids excited! ~ Liz Ullrich