WHITMIRE — Whitmire Community School’s pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade classes celebrated their love for reading during Read Across America Week celebrated March 4 through March 8.
Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on or near March 2, the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss. Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books.
Reading was celebrated in several ways. Each elementary classroom had guest readers come to share a book with them. The readers were other pre-kindergarten through 12th grade teachers and athletes from WCS. The students had guest readers in their classrooms to share.
They asked lots of questions, were engaged in the books, and thanked each of the readers for sharing. Each day of the week, students celebrated reading by dressing up before coming to school.
On Monday, students got “lost” in a story by wearing camouflage to blend in with remarkable readers. On Tuesday, students got “comfy” with a good book by wearing pajamas to school. On Wednesday, students got “wrapped up” in reading by wearing duct tape creatively.
On Thursday, students “doubled” their reading fun by matching outfits with one or more friends for twin day. Lastly, on Friday students were “reading winners” by wearing their favorite school or professional team on team day. Many teachers incorporated fun ways to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday and their love for reading into their classrooms.
For example, Bruyere’s pre-kindergarten class spent the morning reading Dr. Seuss’ “Hop of Pop” and after the book, they did just that. They connected to the book by “hopping” on bubble wrap in the multipurpose room.
As a wrap up to the week, WCS welcomed author Kimberly P. Johnson come visit and meet with each grade level. Johnson is an accomplished children’s book author, speaker, motivator and educator. Her love of reading and her desire to put a stop to illiteracy motivated her to write her first children’s book.
This same desire has made her dedicated to various children’s organizations such as Smart Start, Head Start, and National Reading Councils. She avidly supports and donates a portion of her book sales to literacy organizations. Through her commitment and dedication to education, Johnson inspires others to reach for success.
She inspires them to be creative and to take every opportunity to build their minds. Johnson shared with WCS students her love of books, her strategies for producing good writing, and even read one of her own published books. She was enthusiastic and inspiring and had our students cheering for good writing.
Johnson has published 14 of her own books and students will have the opportunity to order one or more of her books for their own libraries at home.
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