February 20, 2014 by plemmonsa

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge #2 (Part 2): Student Voices

The challenge for Week 2 is to have conversations between adults and children. To give my students, teachers, and families a voice, I created a Google Form to respond to this week’s question. Each Barrow student who fills out the form will have a chance to win a new book to read aloud to someone!

My students and teachers have been responding to these questions throughout this week, so I wanted to share some of their voices with you.

Lucy R., 3rd grade

I think everyone should read….Love Stargirl

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…Frederick Douglass

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Ramona from the Ramona books

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…realistic fiction

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…not being able to stop reading

Savannah M., 5th grade

I think everyone should read….The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…George Washington

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…the victim in the story

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…Lemony Snicket

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…you can sound like someone else, not just who you really are. Ex: I never thought I would say “I got a booboo!”, when I was in fifth grade, but when I was reading, I did!

Isabella B. J., 4th grade

I think everyone should read….Big Nate just because it has something for everyone in it it’s not my favorite book though

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…a librarian

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Loralie from smells like dog

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…fiction adventures and fantasy

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…I get to hear how people really say it like with passion and expressions

Michael R., 4th grade

I think everyone should read….Harry Potter

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…J K Rowling

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Ron Weasley

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…J K Rowling

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…the voices.

Treasa M., 4th grade

I think everyone should read….books about helping the Earth and making it a better place.

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…My Mom / anyone in my family

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Yoko (Yoko’s Paper Cranes) or Kitten (from Kitten’s first Full Moon)

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…Animal books and fictional books.

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…Listening to all of the characters doing things, fitting pieces of the story together, and spending time with whoever is reading to me.

Lily M. 4th grade

I think everyone should read….Wonder

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…my mom

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…the mean guys

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…Bonnie Briant

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…

Marie Boyle, Barrow Kindergarten Teacher

I think everyone should read….The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…Maya Angelou

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…any animal character

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…Mystery or Fiction

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…Sounding like the characters

Jan Mullins, Barrow Spectrum Teacher

I think everyone should read….The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…Ms. Cross

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Kenny (Watson)

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…history or biography

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…bringing characters to life and seeing kids’ eyes light up with real literature

Beth Selleck, Barrow 5th Grade Teacher

I think everyone should read….Absolutely!

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…My daughter

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…The bear from Jamberry

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…historical fiction

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…sharing the time with others

Alanna J, 2nd grade

I think everyone should read….Jazz baby

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…Mom

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…My dad

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…Eric Carle

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…I get to talk.

Yerahm H., 4th grade

I think everyone should read….Owly

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…Great!

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Owly

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…I guess it’s Andy Runton.

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…when you just listen

Tamara S., 4th grade

I think everyone should read….chapter books

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…my mom

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…me and the charcter

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…chapter books

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…the books

Bo S., 2nd grade

I think everyone should read….Diary of a wimpy kid

If I could listen to anyone in the world read to me it would be…My mom

When I read aloud, my favorite character to sound like is…Greg Heffly

The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf is…Horrible Harry

My favorite part about reading aloud or being read aloud to is…Getting to read and listen to fun books

For more information on World Read Aloud Day visit http://litworld.org/worldreadaloudday

To connect with other libraries and classrooms, visit our shared Google Doc.

February 17, 2014 by plemmonsa

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge #2: Adult & Child

Last week, the students and I, along with students from Van Meter Iowa & Okle Miller in Tampla FL, added to a Flipgrid to share our favorite read aloud memories. You can watch and listen to those here: http://flipgrid.com/#ae0e8232

Because of the icy week we had last week, I spent a lot of time at home. I took time to have a conversation about these questions with my 4 year old daughter, Alora. I’ve expanded on my answers a bit in this post, but these are the topics that Alora and I discussed together.

Daddy & Daughter

1. I think everyone in the world should read…

Me: books that speak to their hearts. I think that we all have common connections to why we all read, but I love that we all enjoy different kinds of books. We don’t all have to love Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Harry Potter or Princess books, but each of those books speaks to different readers in different ways. It’s no secret that my favorite author is Kate DiCamillo, but the reason she is my favorite author is that there’s something about her voice in her writing that connects with my heart. From a little girl befriending a dog and hearing the stories of a community to a rabbit trying to find his way home to a tiny mouse looking for the light in the world to a miraculous superhero squirrel, Kate DiCamillo’s books are filled with words that seem like magic on a page to me.

Child: Peter Pan and princesses because I like those. I like princesses and Tinker Bell. Everybody likes princess books.

2. If I could listen to anyone in the world read aloud to me it would be…

Me: It’s hard to pick just one! My second grade teacher Mrs. DeLoach (whose name has changed to Mrs. McKinney) would be one. She brought the characters of the Uncle Remus stories to life and a beautiful southern accent. Those voices were ones that I wanted to imitate in my own reading. Now, I love to hear Carmen Agra Deedy read stories and tell stories. The tones, rhythms, movements, and volumes of her voice keep me hooked into every detail of the story. I think I could listen to her tell stories for hours.

Child: Mommy and Daddy because I don’t know how to read until I get bigger.

3. When I read aloud, my favorite character to impersonate is…

Me: So many people love to hear me read southern stories and create the voices for those characters. I love to make the voices for the characters in Epossumondas. Both Mama and Eppossumondas are such fun to bring to life. I also love to hear how the voices that I create are different that the voices that other readers create for those same characters.

Child: Tinker Bell because she just rings a bell and doesn’t say anything.

4. The genre or author that takes up the most room on my bookshelf (or e-reader) is…

Me: Books by Kate DiCamillo. I have every book that she has written and most of them are signed. Of course now they aren’t all in one place on the bookshelf because they are spread between the living room and both kids’ rooms. That’s a good sign of being well-loved.

Child: Fairytales like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio….Dora went to a fairytale one time too.

5. My favorite part about reading aloud or being read to is…

Me: It allows me to escape into the story in a different way than if I was reading it myself. When a story is read aloud, the words seem to transform the space around everyone listening to the story. For just a few moments, the busy world disappears and I get to step into a time machine that allows me to escape and experience the world through different eyes. When I’m read aloud to, I don’t have to think about saying the words just right. I can just listen and imagine.

Child: hearing the different voices that you and Mommy make.

For more information on World Read Aloud Day visit http://litworld.org/worldreadaloudday

To connect with other libraries and classrooms, visit our shared Google Doc.

February 10, 2014 by plemmonsa

World Read Aloud Day Blogging Challenge #1: Read Aloud Memories

For the next 3 weeks, I’m participating in the World Read Aloud Day blogging challenge. Each week, I will respond to a question along with many other bloggers participating in this global celebration of reading aloud. Our students, teachers, and families will also be involved with these questions each week as I invite them to respond through Flipgrids, Thinglinks, and more. For week 1, I’ve created a Flipgrid. You are welcome to add your own response to week 1’s question along with our students and families by visiting http://flipgrid.com/#ae0e8232 We will be adding to this grid throughout this week.

The Question for week 1

“What is your earliest or fondest memory in which someone read aloud to you?”

My Mom

When I was little, my mom took me every week to the public library in our rural community of Blue Ridge, GA. I vividly remember climbing the steps, walking up the ramp, pulling open the heavy doors, breathing in the smell of the used books for sale in the entryway, and being greeted by name by the public librarian. The children’s section was small, but I had no problem getting an armload of books to take home each week.

My Mammaw

My mom and I would sit in my bed at night and read aloud stories together. Even more than reading aloud the words, we spent time imagining and creating our own stories about the pictures. I remember looking at the characters circling the back of every Little Golden Book and how we would pause at each character and tell a story about that one character. This shared storytelling experience was a foundation of my love for reading. On this same note, my grandmother, “Mammaw”, would look at pictures with me and ask me what was beyond what we could see in the picture. She had a talent for imagining what was beyond the edges of the illustration and telling it in a way that was fact. “There’s a little barn with a man sitting on a stool milking a cow. Do you see it?” Whatever she said I believed. Mammaw would also take to me to yard sales and used book stores to buy books for my own library and we would spend time sharing those stories and talking about them together while my parents were at work.

Those experiences led me to imagine and create stories on my own. Magnets on the refrigerator, porcelain figures lining the shelves, miniature figures, and more all became characters in my own stories and just about anything and everything in the house became a stage. My Mammaw even used a tape recorder (if you know what that is) to record me sharing my made-up stories.

I hope that when I read aloud stories with students whether it’s print, digital, or oral storytelling that I somehow unleash a bit of imagination that will lead to students creating their own story experiences in their lives.

This year, World Read Aloud Day will be a grand experience in our library. Here’s a glimpse at what our week will look like. On March 3rd, we’ll kick off the week with in-person guest readers from our community. These readers will share favorite Dr. Seuss books in every classroom in our school. Immediately following this, our World Read Aloud connections will begin.

Across the week, we have at least 36 connections planned with libraries and classrooms in Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Vermont, Maryland, Indiana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas, Maine, and Germany!

We’ll also connect with authors like Tanya Lee Stone, Barbara O’Connor, Laurel Snyder, Anne Marie Pace, Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw, and Jesse Klausmeier!

Each session will be a bit different, but they will have some common elements too.

We’ll greet one another and tell them where we are located.
We’ll read aloud across the miles. Sometimes this will be students reading to students. Other times, the adults might take turns reading pages from the same book or select characters to portray. Authors will read from their own books or favorite books and take time to allow kids to ask questions about their writing.
To close, students will have a chance to make some connections between the 2 locations. Students often like to find out what the weather is like or what kids like to do for fun in different states. These closing moments build connections between us as a human race.
In some cases, we will collaborate with classes on some type of project. For example, we might create a Padlet or a Flipgrid to share written and video responses to the books we read.
We also take time to look at a Google map and chart the distance between the two connecting schools. It’s really fun when there’s more than one school or author on the Skype call and you can connect multiple dots on a map to see how our voices are uniting across the miles.

I hope that you will plan your own World Read Aloud Day activities. There’s a wealth of resources that can be found at http://litworld.org/worldreadaloudday

December 30, 2013 by plemmonsa

Let’s Connect For LitWorld’s World Read Aloud Day During The Week Of March 5th

On March 5th, we will celebrate World Read Aloud Day with LitWorld again.

We will actually celebrate all week long….March 3rd through the 7th.

One of my favorite connected educator friends, Shannon Miller, and I have been planning our collaboration and teaching plans for 2014 so of course World Read Aloud Day was a very important part of this. We decided to write this post and start planning, connecting, and sharing the excitement for this day.

This is always such a special day for celebrating the power of literacy….and one of the best for our libraries, schools, and students too.

You can read about all of our connections at Barrow at the post from last year, World Read Aloud Day 2013. Also check out Shannon’s post at Van Meter, Our World Read Aloud Day Celebration Connected Us 21 Times During The Week That Made A Difference.

This year we are excited for even more of these special connections.

If you are interested in connecting with others on this day, please add your name, schedule, and ideas to the information in the Google Doc that we started. This will begin to fill up with others around the world as they want to connect their students and schools too.

We plan to celebrate throughout that entire week….March 3-7th.

On March 3, it is also NEA’s Read Across America Day so we will tie this together with World Read Aloud Day too.

Also, check out all the wonderful activity ideas and resources that LitWorld has included on their website here.

The classroom kit is great! We love how it contains suggestions for read-aloud, suggestions for group activities, and a fundraising guide to support LitWorld and their programs.

Let us know if you have any questions on how this works. One of the fun parts is collaborating and throwing around ideas with each other.

Have fun and get connected for World Read Aloud Day this year too.

Many thanks to Shannon Miller for creating this post for us to share.

March 6, 2013 by plemmonsa

World Read Aloud Day 2013

Wow! Even though a major snowstorm was making its way across the country, we celebrated World Read Aloud Day with multiple authors and classrooms around the country. Educators around the world have been orchestrating this day for quite some time through multiple social networks. Through Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, Skype in the Classroom, and Kate Messner’s excellent author website we have planned day-long and even week-long reading events for our students.

Twitter was buzzing this morning with authors and librarians having to reschedule due to the snow, but here at Barrow most of our scheduled stayed secure. Matthew Winner had to cancel due to snow impacting his flight to NC, so Kathy Schmidt and her students stepped in for us. Anne Marie Pace, author of Vamperina Ballerina, had to reschedule since the Virginia snow shut off her power. It’s pretty amazing that we were able to pull off so many connections even with bad weather.

Highlights from the day included:

Okle Miller, librarian in Tampa Florida, and I read We Are In A Book. Okle was Piggie and I was Elephant. Kindergarten students loved it! We tried to play into the cameras in order to look at our audiences.
Kathy Schmidt in Gwinnett County, GA had students listen to me read Same, Same but Different and talk about what was the same and different about living just 48 miles from each other.
The amazing Laurel Snyder shared a favorite picture book with 2 fourth grade classes and then gave them a sneak peak of a new chapter book.
Jesse Klausmeier, author of Open This Little Book, skyped with our students and Shannon Miller’s students in Van Meter, IA at the same time. A favorite question from one of our students for Jesse was “Did it make your family happy when you wrote your book?” We all almost teared up. So sweet!
I shared a favorite story by Colleen Sally called Epposumondas Saves the Day with Mary Priske’s 4th grade in Mt. Vernon, IA and Mrs. Griffith’s 3rd grade joined in too. Students in both states chanted “sody, sody, sody sallyratus” as I read.
Laura D’Elia, librarian in Massachusetts, and I read Same, Same but Different and compared living in GA with living in Massachusetts. Students in Massachusetts had 1:1 iPads while we have 1:1 netbooks.
Lisa Waggett at GoForth Elementary in League City, TX and I read Same Same but Different to 1st grade classes and compared our 2 states.
Mrs. Brink & Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd grade students read poems in 2 voices with Jeff McHugh’s 4th grade students in Arlington Heights, IL. Our students had a lot of energy and it was fun to combine our voices across the miles to read poetry.
Jody Feldman, author of the Gollywhopper Games, read aloud to our 5th graders and allowed them to ask questions. She also gave them a preview of the sequel.

What a packed day filled with releasing words into the air across the country. Skype is such a powerful tool to connect us beyond the walls of our school. It was so interesting to see how much our students don’t know about beyond the boundaries of Athens. I predict that the work that we did today will lead to many long-distance collaborations with libraries around the country. Let’s continue to share the power of reading, connect our students, and understand what it truly means to be part of a global community!

March 1, 2013 by plemmonsa

Read Across America and the World!

We can’t just celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday and Read Across America Day in one day at Barrow.

Look at all these readers!

The Trufflemakers, our winning 5th grade team

Making a game plan

On Thursday, we kicked things off with our 5th grade battle of the books. Five teams competed in 3 rounds of competition. The Trufflemakers and the Fellowship of the Books made it to the final battle. I didn’t think either of them were going to miss a question. The scores ended up being so close, but in the end, the Trufflemakers came out on top. Prana, Gabriel, Sarah, Taylor, and Cassie will now move on to the district competition. Good luck team!

Today, we held our annual Dr. Seuss Day with more guest readers in classrooms than I can count. Ever year just when it seems we won’t have enough people, we end up with 2-3 readers in every room! Many thanks to Kim Ness who took over this project for me and recruited all of our readers. She was such a huge help in this fun day! We had parents, community members, Sigma Phi Epsilon brothers, and even UGA athletes read Dr. Seuss books to our students.

I’m even more excited about what we have coming up next week. March 6th is World Read Aloud Day.

It’s a day to unite our voices around the world, celebrate the joy of reading, and change the world! Through twitter, facebook, and a Google Doc, I’ve collaborated with authors and libraries around the country to have a skype session every 30 minutes with lots of class is our media center. Just take a look at our schedule:

8:30	Carney K, Vertus-K	Okle Miller Tampa, Florida
9:00	Boyle – K, Li K	Matthew Winner Maryland
9:30	Freeman- 4th	Laurel Snyder, author http://laurelsnyder.com/ Atlanta
9:45	Hocking – K	Jesse Klausmeier, author http://www.jesseklausmeier.com/ & Shannon Miller’s Students
10:30	Olin- 4th grade	Mary Priske 4th grade Iowa
11:00	Yawn – 2nd gradeWright-2nd grade	Ann Marie Pace, author http://www.annemariepace.com/ Virginia
11:30	Selleck-4th	5th Grade Laura Beals D’Elia Massachusetts
12:00	Stuckey – 1st grade	Lisa Waggett GoForth Elementary League City, TX
12:30	Watson-1st	Kathy Schmidt Gwinnett County
1:00	Ramseyer – 2nd Grade Brink – 2nd Grade	Jeff McHugh Arlington Heights, IL
1:30	5th grade	Jody Feldman, authorhttp://jodyfeldman.com/ Missouri

I can’t wait to connect our students with so many students, libraries, and authors around our country. In many of these experiences, we will do a shared reading. I will read parts of a book and the skyping guest will read part of the book. Also in each session we will have time to make connections with our guests. We’ll find out a bit about where they live, what they like to do, etc. With each experience, students will broaden their world beyond the walls of our school and beyond Athens. I can’t wait to see what happens!