Reading Craze and Readabration

"I was born with a reading list I will never finish."  --Maud Casey

"Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?" --Christopher Paolini

     Do these quotes speak to you about your reading life?  It is like they are screaming out to me so I decided to come up with a PD opportunity for all the wonderful colleagues I work with.  This brainstorm has been slowly perculating over several days so I think it is brewed and ready to go.  It all began when I was having a conversation with Molly Willer, Brittany Cook and Sharon Esswein on how to help kids increase their vocabulary.  Well, one way is to simply have students read more at home and school.  So, we decided to have these second and third graders develop and make reading plans along with a reading stack for Thanksgiving Break.  I shared my reading plans and a large stack with each class and they had a few days to make plans and a stack of their own. These ambitious students immediatly started making a reading stack.  Then another colleague, Scott Jones, at work wrote his first blog post titled What's Next In The Queue?  This was an awesome post which focused on sharing and making reading plans with his fifth grade class. Over the weekend I read another post titled Top Ten Ways to Encourage Children To Read Over Winter Break by Katherine Sokolowski.  I LOVED this post and I thought it would be great to share with teachers and parents.  
     Well, I realized that we are all trying to build a community of readers within the walls of our classroom.  Why not extend that building of community of readers outside the classroom walls to the building walls of our school.  If we become a strong community of readers who read daily, converse and share books than that will naturally carry over to the classrooms.  

   So, if you would like to be a part of a community of readers at J.W. Reason, all you have to do is the following...

1. Make a stack of books you would like to read over break.  Take a picture of that stack and tweet it out to #lrnjwr #readabration.

2. Tweet out the progress you are making on your reading plans during the holiday break to #lrnjwr #readabration  

3.  Many classrooms have a book graffiti wall so why not tweet quotes from the books you are reading and I can solidify all the quotes using storify.  This something I saw a couple of people do on twitter and it seems really cool to try!

4.  After break we will have a "readabration" with coffee and doughnuts to share out about our experience and the books that made our break more meaningful and enjoyable. 

I hope you are as excited as I am to create and foster a strong reading community at J.W. Reason Elementary!  I hope we can start tweeting out our plans by Friday, Dec. 13th. Let the reading journey begin!  


"Books are my friends, my companions.  They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life." --Christopher Paolini