World Read Aloud Day 2021: Bringing us Together While Staying Apart

World Read Aloud Day has a long history in our school.  We typically spend the week Skyping with students from around the country (and sometimes outside the country).  It is a week of great books and connections.  And then came 2021: pandemic, snow, power outages.

Introducing: Virtual World Read Aloud Day/Week!

virtual shelves of books and pictures of staff member who reads it
One page of our virtual document

Our staff members decided that a classroom celebration would be in order this year (not a library activity).  I created a set of virtual bookshelves with staff reading books.  Staff members read a book which included an introductory video.  This is a great way for students to "visit" with a former teacher or "meet" a future teacher.  Students are accessing it this week, at their teacher's discretion.  

My takeaways: 

Things look different this year, but that is not going to stop us from celebrating!  I hear it through the grapevine that teachers are very appreciative of this resource and whenever I click on the document, students are there.  The silver lining - more teachers are taking this on.

Resources/Related Posts:

World Read Aloud 2019 

World Read Aloud Day 2017

Preparing for World Read Aloud Day 2017


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