World Read Aloud Day 2019

I love World Read Aloud Day!  For the last 6 years I connected my classes with classes around the country (and sometimes beyond).  I start planning in November/December and eagerly anticipate sharing books and stories with new friends.  These friendships have grown into other collaborations and I look forward to this event every year.  This year took on a life of its own, however.  I decided to take a quieter "stay at home" approach.



We celebrated World Read Aloud Day during our library times and as a school.  During library time, students were invited to read aloud in several ways:

  • On whisper phones to themselves.
  • To each other with books small and large.
  • To stuffed animals (or have stuffed animals and puppets read to them).


As a school, we celebrated together.  Our Reader Leaders planned and hosted a simple school-wide assembly.  At our assembly, our Reader Leaders interviewed several staff and students.

  • One student interviewed our gym teacher about the books he was reading.  We have been watching what he reads on his door.  He is reading about running marathons and nutrition for performance.  He revealed he is running a marathon this spring and he is reading about how to best prepare.
  • Another student asked a teacher about her favorite book.  She read the end of We Are All Wonders because she loves the message the book shares.
  • We also invited students to share.  1st graders had been writing book reviews in class.  They shared one with us.
  • 3rd-grade students were studying character and shared some of the personal connections they made to the characters in their books.       
  • We wrapped up the event with a guest appearance from our Joke Squad.  This group of 3rd-grade boys shares a joke with our school every Monday morning to get our week off to a fun start.  This started in our library when we were creating projects to make our world a better place (our #MakersOnAMission) They told jokes, made us laugh, and sent us out of the gym with big smiles on our faces.

Students and staff returned to classrooms to wrap up their day with a reading activity.  Everyone read - teachers read to classes and students read to students.

I returned to the library with a class of 4th graders to enjoy Ann Braden reading aloud the first chapter of The Benefits of Being an Octopus, one of my favorite books of 2018.  Students listened and doodled (as an experiment to see how the effect of doodling impacted their understanding).

Ann Braden joins us via video.

Students have the option to write/draw while listening.

Students reflect on their experience, whether drawing/writing helped or hindered understanding.


My takeaways

As disappointing as it was to not reach out into the world and make connections, students DID enjoy connecting with each other and sharing reading experiences.  I will look forward to making connections with others again, but our little "stay at home" adventure was a satisfying way to spend World Read Aloud Day (week).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Reading Identity: Who am I as a reader?

Image
This lesson was about making a visual representation of our reading selves.  We drew, we laughed, we learned about each other as readers, and started building a reading community.  We did this on a remote day.  *This was developed in conjunction with my brilliant colleagues.* Standards:  AASL: Inquire/Share I.C.1 . Interacting with content presented by others. I decided we needed a theme to tie a disjointed year together and settled on the question:  I spent much of my summer thinking about "identity" but needed a concrete landing place for those big, abstract thoughts.  I wondered what would happen if we thought about "identity" through a reading lens. We read Reading Makes You Feel Good We practiced looking at two options and showing our choice for where we like to read by holding up that number of fingers. Next, we moved on to our directed draw. When we were done drawing, we had a big reveal.  Students were tasked with looking for someone with a similar piece of
Read more

Books as mirrors and windows (with sticky notes & reflections)!

Image
Every year I examine books as mirrors and windows with my students.  Every year I tweak the exploration and this year was no different.  This year's additions included sticky notes and reflections.   Day 1: Mirror moments Sticky notes I created with Tony Vincent's template (link below) After modeling mirror moments (and having students make "me too" signals), students identified a mirror moment from a stack of books at their table.  "This is like my sister and I.  We fight all the time." - 3rd grader "When my mom tells me to clean my room I just sit because I don't know where to start." - 3rd grader Day 2: Window moments In the next class I modeled "window moments" and we drew windows in the air when we heard moments that were "not like us."   Students identified "window moments" at their tables with sticky notes. Students shared their "window moments" through the window we passed around our sharing circl
Read more

Emoji Book Titles

Image
Solving and creating our own emoji book titles was a creative challenge I first started exploring four years ago. It has evolved over time, and this latest version is the one that makes the most sense to me. Try it out  here ! Student-created emoji book titles (From top left corner clockwise: Magic Ramen, Catstronauts, Tiger Rising, Wings of Fire) I love this activity because It requires creative thinking (to both solve and create more) Students choose how they interact - do they want to solve or create? All the activities are student-generated I was able to use Google tools for all aspects of the project Solving emoji book titles I created an interactive activity which allows them to check the answer.  In this google slide activity, students use the emoji clues to guess the title of the book.  By moving the magnifying glass over the box, the answer is revealed. Creating emoji book titles While this activity engages many of our learners, I wanted to offer an option for students to cre
Read more