Loved reading about the book vending machine for kids. I have not seen one of these myself but it sounds like a wonderful idea -making it fun and exciting to read a book. Loving to read fairly common pre-internet and most of us from those times probably took a while how much times had changed.
On the surface, book vending machines look similar to those that dispense snacks or beverages. But inside there are tidy rows of kids’ best-sellers published by Scholastic and other companies, including popular titles like Dog Man; Eyes That Kiss in the Corners; and Norman the Slug With the Silly Shell. The machines don’t take regular currency. Instead, the organization that owns them gives kids tokens for good grades, acts of kindness, or any other behavior it wants to incentivize, which the kids can then exchange for a book.
The idea of exchanging tokens earned for positive behavior to pay for the books makes so much sense. I can see the kindergartners I work with being very excited about such a plan. They already get their tokens in other forms and its a proven model. All that needs to happen is establishing an exchange rate, make the book vending machine token feel like the best prize to win.
In some schools, where kids aren’t showing up at all, they might get a token for attendance. In others, kids might get tokens for good grades. “The key thing is that the kid sees the book as a reward,” Millard says. “They look forward to choosing their book. This creates an excitement around reading.”
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