FloRo is going to do a read-a-thon this month! The Student Council members did a great job brainstorming and planning what will happen over the next several weeks. I am excited that the students decided they would like to raise money to give to an organization called Reach Out and Read. This organization is a wonderful non-profit that gives young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together.
I have worked with an company that will help us with the donation side of the read-a-thon. Parents will be able to share the link to a site and family and friends can donate money through the site. We will be able to track how much money is being donated throughout our read-a-thon. Our goal is to hopefully raise over $5,000 to donate to Reach Out and Read.
The Student Council has set a goal of reading 2,500 books over the course of several weeks. We decided that K and 1st grade will simply count one book as one book. 2nd graders will count 20 pages as one book. 3rd graders will count 30 pages as one book. And 4th graders will count 40 pages as one book. For every 5 books that any student reads, they can come to the office and receive a raffle ticket. At the end of our read-a-thon, we will be drawing names of students to be Principal for the Day and Assistant Principal for the Day.
We will be giving out charts, similar to our kindness thermometers last year, for classes to keep track of how many books they are reading. The Student Council came up with the awesome idea to make the charts look like books, pages, book spines, etc. They are a very creative group! If we reach our school-wide goal, there will be some interesting things happening to the principal and assistant principal. Something about a human ice cream sundae!?
I will be sending more specific information to each classroom through an email, but I wanted to first share through here and get everyone thinking about our FloRo Read-a-Thon!
I just started reading a book called Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child. The author of this book is Pernille Ripp, a 7th grade teacher, who writes and speaks about her passion to get kids to love reading. She blogs regularly on her website called 'Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension.' I highly recommend that you take some time to read what she writes. Like the Lorax who speaks for the trees, Pernille speaks for the kids, all kids.
Events this week:
Monday - Kicking off the FloRo Read-a-thon! End of Trimester 2 (report cards will be available March 28)
Tuesday - Oh no...please no more snow!
Wednesday - Play Preview at 2:15 in the PAC
Thursday - Community Reader Day!
Friday - Half day, 12:15 dismissal, no lunch served, parent conferences during the afternoon
Great things I noticed last week:
- I caught some 2nd graders from Mrs. Wenz's class launching their straw rockets they created. Students were excited to measure how far their rocket could fly!
- Check out our March Madness Book Bracket in the lobby! Thanks Melissa for creating it. Wonder which books will move on to the elite 8 this week?!
- If you were in the hall around 10:45 each day last week, you might have seen the 4th graders trying out their marshmallow catapults! There were some very interesting and different designs, many which really made those marshmallows fly through the air quite a distance.
Just a few articles to check out about reading...
https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/01/31/guided-reading-how-to-make-kids-hate.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-your-mind-to-read.html
https://www.slj.com/2017/08/feature-articles/thinking-outside-the-bin-why-labeling-books-by-reading-level-disempowers-young-readers/#_
And I have shared this before but it's always a good one to revisit...Donalyn shares tons of resources and research about the importance of independent reading...
https://bookwhisperer.com/2015/02/08/ive-got-research-yes-i-do-ive-got-research-how-about-you/
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