hope | Expect the Miraculous

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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 14-21, we celebrate how reading helps us foster hope for our world. Many students have already contributed their voices to talk about Belonging, Curiosity, Friendship, Kindness, Confidence, and Courage.

LitWorld 7 Strengths

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

If you could share a message of hope, what would you read aloud to the whole world?

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 hope, we are inspiring one another to find inspiration in the pages of books and share those pages with the world.

http://flipgrid.com/#2177f37e

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 post about books you hope for this year or characters you would love to meet. You might post a picture of yourself with a book that gives you hope and encourage others to do the same. Whatever additional ways you choose to celebrate “Hope Week”, please tag your posts with #wrad16 and #hopeweek as well as mention @litworldsays (Twitter) and @litworld (Instagram, Facebook).

Litworld WRAD16

At our school, we’ll be sharing many stories of hope. A few of our picks will be Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull, Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope by Nikki Grimes, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo, and many more. What books will you share?

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.

WRAD 16 Doc

Let’s encourage one another this week with stories of hope 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