Tag Archives: courage

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Be Courageous and Share Your Voice on our Courage Week Flipgrid

courage

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.  During the week of February 7-13, we celebrate how reading helps us have the courage to stand up for our beliefs. Many students have already contributed their voices to talk about Belonging, Curiosity, Friendship, Kindness, and Confidence.

LitWorld 7 Strengths

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

When did reading give you the courage to stand up for something you believe in?

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 courage, we are supporting one another’s courage to read aloud the books we love all around the world

http://flipgrid.com/#d0034566

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 have the courage to speak up this week and share something that you believe in with your followers and ask them to do the same. You might post a video of yourself talking about a character who gives you courage. You might be courageous enough to dress as a character for a day and share the experience through social media.  Whatever additional ways you choose to celebrate “Courage Week”, please tag your posts with #wrad16 and #courageweek 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 courage. A few of our picks will be Testing the Ice by Sharon Robinson, Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds, Max the Brave by Ed Vere, Precious and the Boo Hag by Patricia McKissak, and Nana in the City by Laura Castillo.

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 this week by having the courage to stand up for our reading beliefs throughout our global community.

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Let’s All Connect for LitWorld’s World Read Aloud Day 2016

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.

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

WRAD 16 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.

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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:

Litworld WRAD16

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.

LitWorld 7 StrengthsWe 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