Malden High School’s librarian, Mary Liberge, and the Community Library Teen Advisory Board (LTAB) came up with a bingo challenge with the hope of engaging more students to read. Players win by aligning sections they have filled out horizontally, vertically, or diagonally in a row.
The majority of the students who participated in the bingo challenge had positive feedback about this challenge. There are eight or more students that took part, and one of the contestants, Darian O’Brien, said it was really fun. The bingo challenge has been shown to bring people together.
The Library Vending Machine is a website used for students to pick out a book of their liking. This website allows students to read a variety of books from different authors and post book reviews. O’Brien’s thoughts on the library digital vending machine were positive. “I really like the digital vending machine; it was really cool…definitely helpful because it was kind of laid out by each category,” said O’Brien.
The Digital Vending Machine has been handy over the past years for finding books, while other students like to pick out the book, sophomore Ivana Marinkovic and some others prefer searching for books in the library. “I find the digital source useful in discerning the reviews that certain books have gotten, as it increases my motivation to read them,” said Marinkovic.
The bingo challenge lets students expand their knowledge and move out of their comfort zone to try something different. “The bingo challenge exposed me to new topics and genres that I don’t usually read, allowing me to learn about different writing styles,” said Marinkovic. “It was a bit challenging to find books to fit categories, but I went out of my comfort zone,” said Ash Cullity.
O’Brien’s resolution was to read more but, she said, “Once I saw this I was like, oh, this is the perfect reason to like reading more, and after I just slowly got more into reading so it became kind of like a hobby.”
