ANAHEIM : Student Paper Chain Is One for the Books

Jessica Cramer and the 560 other students at Albert Schweitzer Elementary School stretched their chain of paper links through and around the school Thursday until the school was surrounded.

And while stretching the chain wasn’t much of an accomplishment, what went into making the chain was. Each of the chain’s 11,983 links represented a book a student or teacher had read since the beginning of the school year.

Katie Radomski, the school’s reading specialist, said the project’s goal was to challenge the students to read without giving them a material reward. In the past, students have received pizzas and even money for reading.

“We want to get them to read for the sake of reading,” Radomski said. “We want to show them that reading can be fun.”

She also said the chain showed the students how much reading other people do.

“After we stretched out the chain, we had the students walk the entire length of the chain so they could see just how many books were read,” Radomski said.

If Jessica, a 10-year-old fourth-grader, is an example, Radomski’s plan worked.

“The best part (of the project) was that it was fun reading the books and seeing the chain grow around the classroom,” she said.