Good Morning
Lately I have become frustrated with the apathy our students have for taking part in contests.  We have been doing a big fall push on reading where each student records the books they read in Sept. & Oct. In past years we have done butterflies, bats, stars, and passports and this year we repeated the butterflies.  Past years have resulted in about 1500 entries (600 students in the school) and this year we had 600.  We are in the process of figuring out which grades/classes took part in this contest and which did not.  The prizes were not extravagent but practical-- first prize was movie passes,  2nd was a McNally Robinson gift card, 3rd was Subway gift card and 4th was Tim Hortons gift card.  I also drew 10 names of students and gave each a $5.00 gift card to our Scholastic Book Fair. (believe it or not, I still have some of them which were not used.)  My Teacher Librarian and I work hard to get students to read.  We have an awesome collection.  Our circulation stats show that the students ARE reading but they aren't filling in the contest entries.  How does one deal with the apathy the students are showing by not entering the contests. This makes me wonder whether we should do any contests in the future.... Any ideas!!!!!!1