Idaho Falls third grade class crowned state champions of READBowl 9
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IDAHO FALLS — In Tiffany Nielsen’s third grade classroom, football season doesn’t end with the Super Bowl — it ends with thousands of minutes of reading.
This year, all that reading paid off big time for the Cloverdale Elementary School students.
Nielsen’s class has been named the Idaho state champions of the 9th annual READBowl, a four-week global literacy competition inspired by the excitement of the NFL playoffs.
Over the course of the challenge, Nielsen’s 8- and 9-year-old students logged an astonishing 75,603 minutes of reading, averaging 3,600 minutes per student.
The foundation for this success was laid long before READBowl began, as Nielsen’s class fantasy drafted NFL teams during the first week of the school year. Every student followed their team through the season and postseason, tracking weekly scores and completing various math calculations based on real game results.
When she discovered the READBowl through social media over winter break, Nielsen immediately saw the potential. “They’re already excited about football,” she recalled thinking, “so let’s see if they can pull it over to reading and fire up a little bit of excitement.”
“When we came back from break, I said, ‘OK, we are going to start this new challenge.’ They were all on board,” Nielsen told EastIdahoNews.com.
This football-themed learning environment made the READBowl a natural fit.
READBowl was created by former New England Patriots player and Super Bowl Champion Malcom Mitchell, who founded a children’s literacy initiative Share the Magic Foundation after entering the league.
The four-week challenge tracks both in-school and out-of-school reading minutes, with each week representing one quarter of a football game. Final scores are submitted a few days before the Super Bowl.
When the competition began, Nielsen said her students embraced it with the same intensity as their favorite teams.
“We would talk about Mitchell a lot,” she said, “about his struggles and what kind of growth mindset he would need to have in order to be successful in new challenges that he was taking on.”
Students read while waiting in line, during recess and at home. The class even hosted a six-hour read-a-thon day at school, during which the third graders immersed themselves in books for nearly the entire school day.
“One of their journaling prompts was, ‘What did I learn from the READBowl?'” Nielsen said. “One of my students said, “For the first time, I realized that I could enjoy reading.”
This year’s winners were announced on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 8.
While the class did not take home the global grand prize, earning the top spot for the entire state of Idaho is a monumental achievement.
“I watched these kids go from really struggling with reading, and we took a reading assessment, and almost every single one of my kids increased by over 50 points,” Nielsen said.
For her, the victory goes beyond a trophy or title; it represents a classroom culture where literacy is exciting, community-driven and deeply valued.
As Super Bowl Sunday crowned football champions, a group of third graders in Idaho Falls proved that dedication, teamwork and a love of reading can create champions of another kind.
“We are never too old to learn. Knowledge stays with us forever,” Nielsen said.