Use Read Across America to help kids enjoy and relate to what they read by linking books and reading to other experiences in their lives and on the school year calendar. When everything from your Hispanic Heritage Month celebration to the 100th day of school to the science fair to Memorial Day includes books, guest readers, activities, and conversation about reading, you raise awareness about the importance, value, and fun of reading throughout the year.
Here are some ideas to get your year of reading celebration started.
Guest Readers
Having guest readers share books with students is a great activity any time of year. The calendar is rich in opportunities for hosting special guests in the classroom who can read aloud and talk with students about the role reading plays in their lives. Invite parents, members of your community, and local celebrities to make time to read aloud and celebrate the diversity in your community and our country. Consider partnering with a local senior citizen organization for potential readers or see if local public officials or others can come to your school to read with kids.
You can also invite guest readers to virtually read to kids “live” or create a video for them to watch. Help guest readers take advantage of what your technology offers. For example, with Zoom, guests can screen share an eBook so students can see the pictures and words, and still see your guest reading in a thumbnail video. Recorded or live, virtual guest read alouds can be lively with fun backdrops, props, or costumes—even pets!
Share these tips to help prepare your guest readers and make the read aloud experience a great one for them and for your students.
Mystery Readers
Mystery Readers are special guests who come to your classroom—after a mysterious build up—to read aloud to students. Mystery Readers can be parents, grandparents, older siblings, school staff or other members of the community and can visit in person or virtually. Build up suspense by asking Mystery Readers for clues about themselves and share these with students throughout the week so they can unravel who will be reading with them next. Try using polling or forms to share clues and get students engaged in the guesswork.
Host an Author
Deepen student enthusiasm for both reading and writing with a visit with an author! Many authors and illustrators are happy to visit with your students either in person or virtually. These might be short 15-30-minute interactive virtual sessions or an hour or more for longer in-person discussions or activities.
Author visits take some planning and work. Make your request 1-2 months in advance for virtual visits, 3-6 months for in-person visits. Keep in mind that at most, authors and illustrators typically prefer to give no more than three in-person presentations per day. Author visits go best when students have read the author’s books in advance and, if appropriate, have prepared questions.
Most authors have an online presence and can be easily contacted via their websites, social media, or through their publishers. Here are a few places to start:
- The Author Village
- Disney Book an Author
- Lee & Low Authors and Illustrators Who Do Virtual Visits
- Penguin Classroom Request an Author Visit
- Random House Children’s Books Hosting an Author Visit
- Simon & Schuster Planning an Author Appearance
- Sourcebooks Author & Event Requests
Launch a Book Club
Spark excitement and help students learn more about themselves and the important role that reading plays in their own lives when you start a Read Across America Book Club! A Read Across America book club should focus on reading fun and diverse book choices and offer a social experience for readers. It’s a great way to motivate kids to read and get them talking about books. Launch your Book Club or hold a book club activity to celebrate Read Across America.
Read Across America Storypalooza
Stories are powerful, memorable, and help us understand who we are. Stories began with the oral tradition and are still passed on by being heard and retold. Celebrate story and grow a storytelling community by hosting a Read Across America Storypalooza storytelling event! You can focus on encouraging students, families, and staff to retell traditional tales, like Riding a Donkey Backwards or Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship by Chitra Soundar. You can also include other themes, like family stories or stories from the classroom. Offer storytelling resources or a workshop as a prelude to your Storypalooza.
Musical Readers
Make Read Across America really sing with student songs inspired by favorite books and authors! Start your musical adventure by exploring some of the basic concepts of songwriting: rhythm and rhyme, song structure (verses, chorus), melody (patterns) and lyrics (story or narrative). Create a song together as a class before having students work in small groups or pursue individual efforts to create songs inspired by favorite titles. Give them plenty of time to write their own lyrics and the opportunity to compose music for their lyrics. Provide musical instruments, online tools, or music apps or have them find existing music that complements the words they’ve written. For Read Across America and Music in Our Schools Month in March, intersperse performances of student songs with special guest readers reading aloud the books that inspired the songs.
Book Tasting
Work up an appetite for reading! A Book Tasting is a great way to introduce students to a wide variety of books, authors, and illustrators. Work with your school librarian and/or cafeteria staff to transform a space with tables and chairs into a cozy café for readers. Flowers, tablecloths, and silver trays are optional, but add to the fun of students sitting down to browse a variety of books at each place setting and then creating a menu of titles that they want to read in the coming weeks and months. You can help students identify titles of interest with genre or themed tables or place settings and have students rotate throughout the tasting. Consider inviting special guests from your school or community to talk up a book or books as the “Specials for Read Across America Day.”
Book Scavenger Hunt
A Book Scavenger Hunt is a great way to generate excitement about books and reading! Challenge students to search for books that provide mirrors (stories that reflect their own culture and help build identity) and windows (stories that offer a view into someone else’s experience and the range of possibilities in the world). Take a trip to your school or public library for Read Across America and have students look for five titles that are mirrors and five that are windows. Provide specific criteria to help students narrow in on their search, such as books about families, friends, sports, holidays, etc.
Make sure that students actually read and rely on text rather than images to understand gender, languages, cultural identities, etc., presented in the titles. Give students time to look through books to gather their own data then present one mirror title and one window title to the class. Compile these book finds into a recommended reading list for your community of diverse readers!
Poetry Town
Robert Frost said, “All poetry begins with Geography.” Geography, like poetry, is very personal as we interpret both based on our own experiences. Help students learn about the people and places in their community and how they fit in by bringing students together with others—businesses, the public library, local government, arts organizations—to turn your neighborhood into a Poetry Town. This could look like poetry added to public spaces, poems in store windows or on restaurant menus, or poetry readings in all sorts of venues. Host a walking tour of your Poetry Town to celebrate Read Across America!
Or you can get students thinking about what they imagine their community could be and have them build community as they build their own poems. Share an image of a place in your community and ask students to write a phrase in response to what they see and a phrase about what they’d like to see. Have students read their contributions aloud, then have them work together to compile one or two poems using all the lines students wrote. You can do this over several weeks to generate a lot of conversation and poetry. Invite community members to a reading of the completed poems for a Read Across America celebration.
Read Across America StoryWalk
Take steps together as a community of readers on a StoryWalk®! Developed by Anne Ferguson in Montpelier, Vermont, a StoryWalk helps readers enjoy a deconstructed children’s book—page by page—along a walking route in your community.
To make a basic StoryWalk, Tale Trail, or whatever you choose to call it, you’ll need two copies of a picture book (or to create a bilingual StoryWalk bilingual, two additional copies of the same title published in another language). Mount each page spread on cardstock and laminate with a heavy-weight lamination. You should also create a “Welcome” page that explains how the StoryWalk works, includes the front cover of the book, and connects the display to your Read Across America activities. Depending on where you set up your Read Across America StoryWalk (library or school grounds, park, trails, storefront windows along main street, or in the shopping mall), you’ll also need wooden stakes for each laminated page spread and heavy-duty adhesive-backed Velcro to attach them. Window installations can be secured using suction cups with clips or removable wall-safe tape. Space the pages in the story about a 100 or so feet apart. Make sure the location of your display is accessible to all people and consider working with an authorized entity to convert printed materials into formats accessible to blind and print-disabled people.
For your Read Across America celebration, place a staffed table or booth at the end of your StoryWalk where families can get refreshments and more reading resources. Your StoryWalk could also feature student writing, photography, and artwork rather than published works. Find more StoryWalk ideas and how-tos at Let’s Move in Libraries.
Reading Obstacle Course
Help students build both muscles and interest in books when you put reading into action with a Read Across America obstacle course. Whether you build your course in an empty parking lot, park, gym, or classroom, consider what kinds of adaptations or modifications may be necessary to ensure all children can participate safely and successfully. You can keep it simple by marking a path of activities with sidewalk chalk, paint, or duct tape that get kids making all kinds of moves. Or set up stations with a variety of steps, tasks, and challenges that best meet the needs and abilities of your students. You can base your course on:
- literary references from fairy tales or folk tales: turn climbing ropes into Jack’s beanstalk or Rapunzel’s hair, climb and roll like Jack and Jill on a wedge mat, or conquer the cargo net that is Anansi’s web
- classic children’s books: have students squeeze under Mr. McGregor’s “gate”, bounce like Tigger and Roo, or run along a track through tunnels and over trestles like Donald Crews’ Freight Train
- books that really move: take titles such as Barnyard Dance, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, I Got the Rhythm literally or interpret the action in titles such as Firebird or Jabari Jumps
- nonfiction: share animal facts that get kids hopping, slithering, flapping and more, have them take a journey through the digestive or circulatory system, or activate citizens with a how-to- exercise-voting-rights obstacle course
Want to go bigger than a reading obstacle course? Host a Reading Field Day and offer a variety of book-themed athletic games along with different challenges, community involvement, artistic activities, and more!
Nature Connection
Everyone can benefit from opportunities to relax, reflect, and connect with nature. Work with school staff, students, parents, and community groups to help kids make those connections at school—be it with the creation of an outdoor garden, a bench placed under a tree on school grounds, an outdoor Story Walk, a quiet window-filled corner of the school with containers of blooms, or a field trip to explore nearby natural environments. The sense of wonder that nature provides is exactly the curiosity you want students to bring to a book and can lead to fabulous Read Across America celebrations in outdoor spaces. Try readings of We Are Water Protectors, All Around Us, and Zonia's Rain Forest and get a conversation going with kids about ways they can help care for the Earth. Designate a Book Tree or start a Reading Garden—a special space for reading, literary activities, and community engagement—where you can share titles with students such as The Book Tree or Growing an Artist. Or just head outside for lunch and have a book-nic—a picnic with books!
Little Free Library
Bring communities together through reading! Work with students, parents, and community groups to create a neighborhood gathering spot to get to know others and share an interest in books, reading, learning, and service. Develop an action plan to open or revitalize a Little Free Library in your community. This book exchange where neighbors, friends, and students can share their favorite books and stories, is a great way to learn through and with others. Celebrate Read Across America with story time at the opening of your own Little Free Library! Or Read Across your town by connecting with Little Free Library stewards for a day (or months’ worth) of fun reading events at all the Little Free Libraries in your community!
Beyond the Book Cover
It can be a challenge to put internal biases aside. Help students learn a little about their own preconceptions when you ask them to judge a book by its cover. Provide books that students haven’t read and are not familiar with. Ask them to look only at the outside cover. Then, based on what they see, have them write down what they think the book is about, what the characters are like, and what’s going to happen. This can be a paragraph or a list. Next, have them read the book (or read the book aloud if you are doing this as a group activity) and then write down what the book was really about. Were their first impressions right? Have them talk about how their opinions changed and why it is important to see what’s inside before passing judgement. Use their informed opinions to create a recommended reading list to share for Read Across America.
Kind Readers
Words of caring and kindness can help people know they have value and that someone cares. Get students thinking about why small kindnesses matter and how to make them happen. Share books like Lubna and Pebble by Wendy Meddour and I Walk with Vanessa by Kerascoët that show students that their compassion really can make a difference. Then celebrate books, reading, and kindness for Read Across America by having students create bookmarks with kind words and inspirational phrases. Bring the bookmarks (and if possible, donated books) to caring centers of your community—your local hospital, food bank, children’s agency, or senior center—to spread kindness and the joys of reading.
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