Reading Challenge with vocational students

As you all well know, I've been challenging my students to read regardless of their age.
As I posted here a couple of days ago, besides my senior students, my vocational students have also been invited to allocate some time to reading (but in class, with me ;)), in other words, every friday and for about half an hour, they would read either the book they had chosen and brought into class or any of the ones I already had in store in case they "forgot" theirs.
Have I been successful? I would say yes, but I won't lie; I have no illusions and again and again as teachers we face the same situations: not all have managed to finish the books they started... either they were absent from class, involved in different activities or... they simply "forgot" it! Whenever that happened, I would show them some others and they would pick one to read - they would start a different book without ever finishing it. Others though have read more than one - some more slowly, others a bit faster - and one of the students accomplished the feat of reading 5 books. For these classes and for the time we had, it's not bad, believe me!
Let me show you how it was in a clear and simple way:

Now have a look at them reading:

As for the student who read more books - Sónia Leite - she read 5 books in class throughout the year, but I spotted her reading several books in Portuguese and so I truly believe she deserved her REMARKABLE READING AWARD: she got not only a certificate but also books, a notebook and a computer mouse thanks to Oxford, Cambridge and Pearson.
Yet let me tell you the following before finishing this blogpost: no student ever thought I would make use of the collected data much less that I would award anything because I didn't want it to work as a kind of bribery: I challenged them to read for pleasure and not expecting any kind of reward though in the end I felt I should praise those who had read more books / pages.
And here is our winner, Sónia

Hope you all keep on reading, if not the traditional printed word, Gutenberg's precious heritage, then online magazines, newspapers and ebooks.
Never stop, never give up! Wish you all the best, folks!
Teacher Alex

READING MISSION - reading for pleasure

After years buying books for the school library and some teacher training sessions with Verissimo Toste (THANK YOU!), I made up my mind it was time to do something to enhance reading habits among my adult classes and, at the same time, improve their English language proficiency.
As one of my most motivated classes started at 7 p.m., I launched the challenge: why not start reading a few lines / pages to calm down and relax while waiting for latecomers? Well, they accepted my suggestion right away and our deal was that I wouldn't test their readings in any way... I just wanted them to tell me what their story was all about! Not much, I guess...

Classroom Door sign

The following week I took some of my own books and some from the school library - basically Oxford Bookworms, stages 1 and 2, ranging from true stories to fiction, from literature classics to modern, so that they could have plenty of choice. Each student picked up one and I printed a classroom door sign (right)to remind sts of what we were doing and to let others know we didn't wish to be disturbed ;).
This reading mission went on for several weeks with me setting the example and never forgetting my own book; I obviously kept my promise and never asked them a single question (though they can't say the same...) - after all, that's what it was about: reading for pleasure to get an overall understanding of the text and ignoring (?) unknown words.
When the school year was about to finish, only two sts had managed to read their books till the very end. As requested beforehand, I asked for a very short summary/opinion/review of their books. In the meantime, I built a wallwisher so that they could publish what they were going to write. Again, I set the example and wrote two posts on my readings. That still wasn't enough for me though. To reward those two assiduous and punctual sts, I registered and created my first two glogs published here and here which will also be used by our school librarian.
No certificates (as I used to do with my teenager classes) but an environmentally friendly way of publicising what adult learners can also achieve (I did these two posters but we can also ask sts to do them themselves!); this way, there has been a much wider recognition and it surely boosted my adult sts' self-esteem. And how!

Here are a couple of related resources that might interest you.
Besides glogster, another suggestion to promote books is using book trailers / video as described here. A lighter way to find a new book to read is trying this literary web project.

Well, thanks for your time and patience. You know I do appreciate sharing and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject. Thanks again :)