Wacky Reader is a free reading recognition program for elementary classrooms. Teachers set the goal. Students do the reading. SONIC makes the achievement worth celebrating — with a certificate good for a free Wacky Pack Kids Meal.
Reward
hungry
readers.
Presented by Umstattd Sonic Group & your local SONIC
The school leads the reading.
SONIC helps celebrate it.
The idea is simple
Wacky Reader isn’t a curriculum, a fundraiser or a one-night event. It’s an eight-month recognition program built to sit alongside whatever reading instruction your school already uses.
Teachers decide what a reading goal looks like for their own classroom — pages, minutes, chapters or books. When a student hits it, the teacher hands them a Wacky Reader certificate. That certificate is redeemable at participating SONIC Drive-Ins for a free Wacky Pack Kids Meal.
No reporting requirements. No instructional mandates. No cost.
8
Months, September–April
$0
Cost to your school
2,300+
Classrooms enrolled
129
Participating schools
How a classroom runs Wacky Reader
Four steps
Start to finish, a teacher’s involvement is setting a goal and handing out certificates.
3
Track progress
Students mark their months on the laminated classroom progress poster included in every kit.
4
Celebrate
Goal met? The teacher tears out a certificate. The student redeems it at SONIC for a free Wacky Pack Kids Meal.
2
Set the goal
Each teacher picks a monthly reading goal that fits their grade and their students — pages, minutes, chapters or books.
1
Enroll
A school, teacher or librarian signs up online with a classroom count. That’s the whole application.
Find your starting point
Who is this for?
Teachers & schools
Enroll your classrooms, see exactly what arrives in the kit, and get answers for your principal.
Families & students
What the certificate is, how to redeem it, when it expires, and how to keep a young reader going.
Public libraries
Summer and after-school reading programs can run Wacky Reader with their own goals and materials.
Free to schools. Every certificate, poster, bookmark and sticker is funded by your local SONIC franchisee.
You set the goal. Nothing prescribes what students read or how much. A first-grade goal and a sixth-grade goal look nothing alike, and that’s the point.
Recognition, not promotion. The program is written to be district-appropriate: no advertising to students, no data collection, no instructional interference.
All eight months in one box. Kits arrive before September with 200 certificates per classroom — enough to run the whole year without reordering.
Extra recognition. Participating schools can be spotlighted on local SONIC social media, and select classrooms earn an end-of-year Wacky Pack Party.
Every design decision in this program came from one constraint: it cannot add work to a teacher’s day.
Built to fit a real classroom
Why teachers say yes
Every classroom gets its own kit
Inside the box
Kits are produced and shipped by classroom, not by school, so no teacher has to share.
Laminated progress tracker poster
200-certificate booklet
Student bookmarks
Your neighborhood SONIC, all school year
In partnership
Wacky Reader creates repeated positive contact between students, families, schools and the SONIC Drive-Ins in their own community — for eight months, not one night.
Tell us your school, your contact and how many classrooms you have. We handle the materials, the printing and the shipping — at no cost to you.
Bring Wacky Reader
to your classrooms
Ready when you are