confidence | Expect the Miraculous

Each week leading up to World Read Aloud Day (February 24th) we want to join our voices around the world to celebrate one of the strengths of reading aloud. Many students have already contributed their voices to talk about Belonging, Curiosity, Friendship, and Kindness.

LitWorld 7 Strengths

During the week of January 31-February 6, we celebrate how reading helps us be confident and proud to be who we are. Reading the world empowers us to own our strengths.

We have created a Flipgrid for you to share your responses to the following question:

What stories make you confident and proud to be you?

We hope you will share this Flipgrid with other educators, students, and families around the world and record your responses which can last up to 90 seconds. Wouldn’t this be a great way to practice some informational writing in classrooms? Wouldn’t you love to hear stories from the families that you serve? Aren’t you curious about the perspectives on this question from around the world? Let’s join our voices and contribute responses all week long. By sharing our stories of confidence, we are supporting one another’s confidence in the power to read aloud.

http://flipgrid.com/#d6716a6b

In addition, you might also consider coming up with your own posts in response to this week’s theme on your own blog or site. You might write or record about a book or character that feels personal to you. You might strike a confident pose with a book that gives you strength and post that picture to social media. You might read in a place that you normally wouldn’t and take a picture to share. You could dare others to do the same. Whatever additional ways you choose to celebrate “Confidence Week”, please tag your posts with #wrad16 and #confidenceweek as well as mention @litworldsays (Twitter) and @litworld (Instagram, Facebook).

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At our school, we’ll be sharing many stories that demonstrate confidence. A few of our picks will be One Green Apple by Eve Bunting, Ish by Peter Reynolds, Star of the Week by Barney Saltzberg, Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen, Firebird by Misty Copeland, and Bridget’s Beret by Tom Lichtenheld.

It’s not too late to share your schedule for World Read Aloud Week on our shared Google Doc and find someone to connect with around the world.

Let’s empower one another’s confidence this week throughout our global community.

It’s time for us all to start making plans and building excitement for Litworld‘s World Read Aloud Day 2016. This year, World Read Aloud Day takes place on February 24, 2016, but many of us will celebrate the entire week of February 22-26 and into the next week for Read Across America. We also have an exciting addition this year called the “7 strengths” of reading aloud, which will give us an opportunity to connect our voices leading up to the official World Read Aloud Day.

WRAD map

World Read Aloud Day “calls global attention to the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories.” When we connect our students through Skype, Google Hangouts, or other web tools, they experience the power of the read aloud and realize that they are connected with a bigger world that is both the same and different from them.

Shannon McClintock Miller and I invite you to start posting your schedules on our shared Google Doc.

http://tinyurl.com/wrad16

When you share your schedule, be sure to include:

Your name
Your contact info such as social media, Skype, and/or email
Your role
Your school and grade levels
Your location
List your time zone when posting your available dates and times

After you post your own schedule, take a look at the other schedules and sign up on someone’s schedule to connect your students. We’ve found that it doesn’t matter if same grade levels connect with one another. Often times, an older grade can read aloud to a younger grade or younger grades can find parts of a books that they can read aloud to an older grade. There’s not just one way to connect. Part of the fun is meeting new friends, planning your read alouds, and seeing what magical things happen during your connection that you weren’t even expecting.

We have many ideas from previous years on our blogs. You can read more about World Read Aloud Day 2015 on Expect the Miraculous and The Library Voice. Litworld also has several resources for you to use in your planning and connections including:

A classroom kit .
An online picture book New Day, New Friends
Ideas to spread the word on social media

Each week leading up to World Read Aloud Day, we will be focusing on one of the 7 strengths of reading aloud. Wouldn’t it be fun to hear voices from around the world reflecting on these strengths as we await our real-time connections? We’ve made a series of Flipgrids that anyone can add to. We hope you will all will reflect on these questions with your students, teachers, and families and have them all respond on a Flipgrid. All you need is a computer with a webcam or a free app on a tablet. We’ll be sharing more posts about these strengths and questions later, but for now, here is a list of the strengths and the links to the Flipgrids.

January 3rd Belonging Week http://flipgrid.com/#8e21e4e6
January 10 Curiosity Week http://flipgrid.com/#47700909
January 17 Friendship Week http://flipgrid.com/#25c255a6
January 24 Kindness Week http://flipgrid.com/#527147e0
January 31 Confidence Week http://flipgrid.com/#d6716a6b
February 7 Courage Week http://flipgrid.com/#d0034566
February 14 Hope Week http://flipgrid.com/#2177f37e
February 21 WRAD Week http://flipgrid.com/#4267a2af

We have an opportunity now more than ever before to connect our voices around the world leading up to World Read Aloud Day and throughout WRAD week. We hope you will take advantage of all of these tools to show our students and the world that reading aloud makes us strong and connected. Please let us know if you have any questions along the way. Happy connecting!

Andy Plemmons @plemmonsa

Shannon McClintock Miller @shannonmmiller