World Read Aloud Day: A celebration of reading aloud to children

Did you know that February 1st was World Read Aloud Day? Me either! Well, that was until our district told us. You can read more about the initiative over on Litworld. Now I love a great real aloud and rarely need a special day to partake, but the premise of the whole event brought some much needed attention to a sometimes overlooked literacy practice. Amid all of the daily rigor and general stress to fit in a million standards, a simple read aloud can often be scratched from a daily schedule. As well, with the chaos of daily schedules of work, activities, and other obligations, reading to children at home can sometimes be put on the back burner. Even though I am well aware of the benefits of reading aloud to children, I too have been guilty of putting it aside both in my classroom and my home.

One premise of our district's celebration was inviting community members into the schools to read to the children. People from our city's biggest employer, Phillips Petroleum, and other prominent business and civic organizations descended throughout the day on our three elementary campuses to spend time in classrooms reading beloved children's tales. The joy on the kids' faces when people came especially to spend time reading to them was priceless. Due to it being flu season, I even was able to get in on the action and fill in for a sick reader. One catch....I had to read in Spanish! Between a few college semesters of Spanish, experiences from Spanish mass, and an amazing colleague - I survived! It is an experience I encourage everyone to have. You really get a better feeling for what your English Language Learners experience when they first learn to read English.

Later that evening, our campus hosted an event for families where we created thematic rooms to related to our chosen book and added in a craft or stem activity. My colleague and I created a jungle themed room to read Janell Cannon's Verdi. This is one of my favorite stories! It is from the the same author as Stellaluna  and tells the story of a rambunctious young tree boa. Young Verdi reminds me of myself when I was young! We created a huge tree from wire, PVS pipe, brown paper, and vinyl table cloths. The rest of the room was surrounded with vinyl table cloth vines. We played rainforest sounds and covertly hid a few plush snakes in the foliage. After reading the story, teams were given 1 plastic spoon, 8 rubber bands, and 9 popsicle sticks. Their STEM task was to build a catapult to launch their own "Verdi" (aka a green pipe cleaner piece). We kept a running track of their three attempts and found some overall winners from the night. Other rooms were focused around books such as The Day the Crayons Quit, The Invisible Boy, Hansel and Gretel, and The Three Little Pigs. The kids and their families had a blast! Every student left with a book of their own! While it was a lot of work, seeing our students and their families enjoying themselves with a literacy focus made this Literacy Loving Lady so excited!

You don't have to celebrate World Read Aloud day or do anything extravagant, but we must work on encouraging our families to read aloud in their homes. The benefits are endless! It can be a long book, a short book, a newspaper article, a recipe - ANYTHING! Kids need to see their parents literacy skills in action and every time they are hearing someone read aloud they are hearing fluency and new vocabulary. Such a simple thing has so many benefits! I made this handout to explain to parents why reading aloud is so important. Feel free to use it at your next literacy event or to discuss with parents. Together we can work to make every day a time where the world is filled with reading aloud.