With the help of Greater Longview United Way and Wellness Pointe, Spring Hill Intermediate School recently received a new book vending machine filled with free books for students.
Danna Robertson, the school principal, said the donation was thanks to a grant from the United Way along with assistance from a local business. Wellness Pointe will be donating $1,000 for five years in order for the campus to purchase books and keep replenishing the machine with new selections.
The book vending machine will serve as a way to boost students’ love for reading and reward them for being good students.
Students can earn a token to “purchase” a book in several different ways, Robertson said, including earning best school attendance for each nine weeks where a class from each grade level will be awarded with a token. Top readers in each class, the Panther of the Week and Student of the Month will also receive tokens.
“Also all of our staff are given two tokens so if they see a student trying extra hard or exhibiting good behavior, we call it ‘caught you being good’ …,” she said.
The machine offers a variety of genres for students to choose from.
“We have some fiction, nonfiction, but they’re all in our students’ reading level. They’re high-interest books that our librarians helped us choose from Scholastic, some items that are popular in our book fair every year,” she said.
The students are looking forward to the opportunity to use the new machine.
“We’re super excited to be a recipient of the book vending machine and we’re so thankful to the (Greater Longview United Way) and Wellness Pointe for their generous donation. I think it will benefit our kids and they’re super excited to have it here at their campus,” she said.