Parents and educators have long feared the “summer slide,” where young minds become potentially inactive during an extended vacation. To combat the slump, James M. Quinn Elementary School launched a program last May to keep the gears turning.

Quinn participated in the national “Summer Reading Challenge,” which is run by the book publisher Scholastic Corporation. As kids read books, had books read to them or read to others, they would track the number of minutes they spent reading and log it on the Scholastic website.

Between the first week of May and the first week of September, Quinn’s students logged 474,844 minutes.

“We have kids who, when you walk by them, they’re engrossed in a book. They love to read, and, I think, part of it is that they’re encouraging each other,” said Assistant Principal Audra Thomas.

All the hard work – and hours and hours of reading – paid off on Monday morning when Lauren Baker, the first lady of Massachusetts, arrived at Quinn Elementary to congratulate the students for logging the most minutes in the state.

She awarded the school with a plaque and encouraged the students to keep going. She said she would return if the school completed its next goal: logging 1 million minutes by the end of the school year.

“Students across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts read over 2 million minutes this summer,” said Baker during a school assembly. “Of all the students in Massachusetts – and there are millions of students – the Quinn School read almost half a million minutes. I don’t know how you found the time.”

She said that, by reading plenty of books, the young students will develop into more curious adults and learning will become an easier process overall.

“As you read more and more books, you’ll learn that your imagination can take you to far away places and introduce you to characters that you’ll fall in love with and remember for the rest of your life,” she said.

After the school assembly, 15 students who had logged the most minutes in the entire school were brought into the library for a special treat – citations signed by Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito.

“When people do great things in the state of Massachusetts, the governor and the lieutenant governor want to give them a citation. Each of you has done something pretty amazing by reading over 4,000 minutes,” said Baker.

Kate Powers, a library media specialist, brought the Summer Reading Program to Quinn after having success with the program at another school district.

“[The students] enjoyed the competitive nature of the program. They liked the technology aspect of the program. They really like seeing their minutes logged in front of them,” said Powers. “When I brought it over here, they had the same reaction.”

She said frequently logging minutes can provide encouragement for kids because they can see their weekly total and grand total.

“It’s a tough sell to get them to read. But it’s a little bit at a time. They’re not logging thousands and thousand of minutes at once,” she said. “If you just log 15 minutes each day, those numbers add up. Once they see that, it’s a little less overwhelming for them.”

Third grader Sydney Leary, 9, was one of Quinn’s top readers, logging more than 4,000 minutes during the summer vacation.

“It’s not good to stare at a TV screen all the time,” said Leary. “You can get a headache because it’s just a screen. With a book, it’s not bright or anything.”

Third grader Ella Whelan, 8, said she read entries in the “Magic Tree House” book series to rack up minutes. She would recommend that everyone read more often.

“You can learn more, and you can actually learn words from reading,” said Whelan.

During the assembly, Powers said that Quinn has currently logged more than 140,000 minutes in the school year thus far.