As many of you know the month of March is celebrated as reading month in schools across the country. My school used a to a competition with earning AR (accelerated reader) points. Those who met their goal were able to attend a bowling party. This school year we are no longer doing AR and had to find a new idea. The staff knew we wanted something to united our school family and something that would involve all students no matter their reading level.
One staff member came up with the idea that we could do a twist on march madness with picture books. As a school we attempted to get together multiple times each week to read the books and then vote on a winner. I say attempted because COVD-19 shut our school down and at this point we are unable to finish the battle.
Parent volunteers put up this bracket in our main hallway. Using pictures of each book's cover so the students could track which books won.
Reading copies of each picture book to the entire school was a challenge. We enlisted the help of our librarian to find new picture books or books that had not been checked out of our library yet. The PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) was generous to buy a full set of copies for each grade. With the plan at the end the books would be raffled off during a school assembly to the students. The Library will also get a copy of the books so that students can re-read the books.
In order to read all of these books to the student body we enlisted the help of community members, teachers, and parents. Once a week we gathered to read two books to the entire school at once. We also had buddy reads where buddy classrooms joined together and each teacher read a book to the two classes at once. The teacher exchange was my favorite. All at once the teachers left our classrooms went to another grade and read them a book. I got to read to second graders and they had so many questions and stories about each book.
Now some people might think was too little kid for the older students, but as a former middle school teacher I can tell you everyone loves a good picture book. When the winners were announced each day my students would cheer if their choose was selected.
In case you are curious the books we chose to read are below. I also linked them to amazon in case you want to read them
Did your school do anything for March is reading month? We you able to continue it virtually? I am curious to see what other schools did.
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