A roomful of Alberton elementary students waited in anticipation last Thursday morning as School librarian, Carole Carlstrom held up a basket filled with red tickets. One by one, the tickets were drawn and a name read as the students won a variety of prizes.

Students received goodies baskets, fishing poles and gift cards, but the big prizes were two bikes donated by the Masonic Mountain Lodge 110. It was all part of March Reading Madness designed to encourage students to read more books.

March Reading Madness used The Accelerated Reading Program. After a book is read, the student is then tested for comprehension. Once points were earned, they received tickets that they could put into buckets for the various prizes. Not surprisingly, the bike bucket had the most tickets.

Ed Heppe, who has been a Mason for around 17 years, said they’ve been donating bikes to the reading program for about 10 years. The Masons donate eight bikes in total and give them to Superior and St. Regis, as well as Alberton schools. The donation program is in conjunction with the Grand Lodge of Montana, which donates $800 and the Mountain Lodge, $400.

“We have the option of getting smart pads,” Heppe said, “but we want to promote exercise and so we get the bikes.”

There were no complaints about the prizes, when Micah Acker and Colton Baughman’s names were called as the winners of the bikes. Micah, along with Gage Horn, also received the most points and were awarded as the top readers.

The contest started in March, which is also National Reading Month and Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Also, as part of the celebration, the students studied engineering and architecture.

For one of their challenges they were instructed to make an origami baseball hat made out of newspaper. Many of the students wore their cleverly decorated hats during the awards ceremony.