Students and Families Enjoy Read Across America Week 2019

Read Across America is a fun initiative to promote reading, created by the National Education Foundation. The focus is to create the love of reading and to create diverse readers. It’s a great opportunity to highlight special celebrations and observances throughout the school year. Each month, there are suggested books for readers posted on their website. As a result, the selections are available for readers of all levels, plus activities, and resources to help you create fun, exciting learning experiences around them.

Activities

As a public-school teacher, I see the excitement firsthand that this week brings the kiddos. During the week, our school promotes the joy and excitement that reading brings us. This is especially well received due to the high demands that our students are working under during this testing season. The kids enjoy the time to read, for the fun of reading – no strings attached! It all culminates with the observation and celebration of Dr. Seuss’s birthday (March 2nd), the students celebrate on Friday, March 1st. We have a puppet show planned on our morning show for the kids, library displays to tour some Dr. Seuss fun facts, as well as some Dr. Seuss videos, which will be played throughout the day.

Encourage Reading

This is a great time to talk about reading and let your kids know the importance of reading. There are ways we can encourage young readers to dive into books. A great way is to model it for them! Show your kids your love of reading and talk about what you are reading, and why you enjoy it. You can show them many different genres through a trip to the public library. As you search for that perfect book, seize the moment and sit in an aisle with a picture book with your young reader, then just read it aloud to them!

In addition to reading, there are some wonderful ways to help kids understand the connection that communication and writing have with reading. You can set up a mini library in your home, where they can have a space to be quiet and cuddle up with a book. During this time, you can talk about your day and they can tell you about theirs so that they develop their language skills. You can create a writing center as well, where they would have access to different papers, envelopes and writing instruments, it makes the process of writing exciting!

Resources

The NEA has a lot of great interactive resources including their digital calendar that will give you a great idea of activities that are planned for your enjoyment. Check out their link here http://www.readacrossamerica.org/. It’s a fun time to check out some other resources as well especially if you want to bring the learning into your home for further enrichment during this week or all year long! Here are some links that our media specialist suggested, and she knows her stuff!

Seussville website http://www.seussville.com/Educators/educatorLessonPlans.php
We Are Teachers https://www.weareteachers.com/best-dr-seuss-activities/
Varsity Tutors https://www.varsitytutors.com/englishteacher/drseuss
A to Z Teacher Stuff http://themes.atozteacherstuff.com/488/dr-seuss-activities-lesson-plans-printables-ideasunits/
Scholastic Mini Unit https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/unit-plans/teaching-content/dr-seuss-mini-unit/

Above all, I hope you have a great week enjoying literacy! Happy reading America!