READ ACROSS NCS 2025 - IT WAS A MONKEY!

To borrow from Sherlock Holmes' patent phrase, "The Game is afoot!" And, quite literally, during Read Across NCS 2025, the game was all about a foot! During a routine elementary chapel, early in February, Northwest Christian's faculty, students, and staff were stunned to discover that a Footwear Felon had stolen Mr. Brown's left shoe! Not only that, but somehow the Lego display in the Shortridge Elementary Classroom Building had been destroyed! What was happening? As you will read below, our take on Read Across America involved a week of mystery-themed reading and clues that ultimately led us to the revelation that the Footwear Felon was not what we expected! Click on the video here or below to watch the summation of the Read Across NCS 2025 event. Or, for a fuller explanation of clues and resolution, follow this link.

We read! Sherlock and Sherlock need your help! Each evening, students are being challenged to collectively read 20,000 minutes as a community! If, each evening, students hit that 20,000 minute mark, the following morning, at 9:00am, a clue will be unveiled...a clue that may lead us to the identity of the Footwear Felon! If, by the end of the week, our super student sleuths hit 80,000 minutes, we will hold a special assembly in the Don Sanderson Gymnasium on Friday, February 7th, at 2:00pm. During that assembly clues will be considered, accusations will be assigned, suspects will be stumped, and the identity of the Footwear Felon will be revealed!

So, in simple terms...

Read as much as you can each night. If each K-5th student reads between 30 and 40 minutes per evening, we will hit the goal of 20,000 minutes each night! You can report your reading minutes here!
Daily clues. If we hit 20,000 minutes per night, the next morning a new email will go out to the entire world holding the next clue--in the form of a video--see below!. Also, each morning at 9:00am, the ReadAcrossNCS.com website will be updated!
Report your minutes. Each evening, parents should post students' nightly minutes using the link provided in the daily emails. In order to be counted for the previous evening, reading minutes must be reported by 8:00am each morning, Tuesday, February 4th through Friday, February 7th.

Each morning, Monday, February 3rd through Thursday, February 6th, we will be randomly drawing the names of two readers from the list of students that reported their reading minutes from the evening before. One of these students will be from K-2 and the other from 3-5. Our K-2 student winners will have the opportunity to come to the elementary office in the Shortridge building and choose a free mystery-themed board game to take home and play with their family. Our 3-5 winners will be included in a field trip with Sherlock Brown and Sherlock Dowdle to an "escape room" where they will be able to play out a mystery together with the Sherlocks.

Here's an easy and memorable way for our student sleuths to double their nightly reading minutes! Each evening, if a parent, grandparent, sibling, etc. reads to or with the student, that counts as double minutes! For example, if Dad reads for 15 minutes with the student, that will count as 30 minutes.

Each evening of reading will have a fun thematic aspect to it. These evening themes are...

Monday, February 3rd - A screen-free night! Students will read as many minutes as they can! But, each minute of screen time that they consume that evening will count against their total reading minutes! In other words, if you read 30 minutes and play Minecraft for 30 minutes, your total is 0 minutes!
Tuesday, February 4th - Outdoor adventure! The backyard, the patio, the local park – any place outdoors will count! All of the reading minutes that qualify as recorded on Tuesday evening must be read outdoors!
Wednesday, February 5th - Faith comes by hearing! Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God! This evening, all reading minutes must be read from God’s word! No other reading minutes can be counted! Looking for a good place to start? Try two of Mr. Brown’s favorite books from Scripture - Mark or John.
Thursday, February 6th - Try something new! On Thursday, students must read a book within a series or from an author that they have never read before! If you’ve read from the series or a book by the author previously, it doesn’t count!

This link is where you can report your nightly reading minutes!

Remember, if each student averages between 30 and 40 minutes of reading per evening, we will hit our goal. Click on this link and enter your student's name, your student's teacher, and the number of minutes that they read for that evening. If you have multiple students, you can click on the link multiple times.