It’s Time to Read Across America

March is here, which means librarians across the country are celebrating National Read Across America Day (and National Reading Month), a time to celebrate and foster a love of reading and life-long literacy skills for students of all ages.

National Read Across America Day begins on Dr. Seuss's birthday, March 2nd, and was established in 1998 by the National Education Association as a means to get children excited about reading throughout the country. Read Across America Day is also a powerful moment for storytelling and a way to further connect and strengthen your community of teachers, parents, librarians, and students. 

How can you share the power of stories this National Read Across America Day? Here are some tried and true tested ways guaranteed to engage your library students for this coming National Reading Month. Let’s begin!

Bring in the mystery

Who isn’t fond of a good mystery? Whether or not your students are in elementary, middle, or high-school, everyone will love to figure out who is going to be the guest reader (a mystery reader can also easily be shifted to a mystery author or mystery speaker for older audiences). 

Hosting a mystery reader for Read Across America is an easy and effective way to engage your kids and build up anticipation and energy surrounding the event (which could be just one day or an entire week of mystery readers.) Additionally, hosting guest readers is an important way of building community in your school library and can be easily adapted to a virtual classroom for those who can’t make it in person- allowing your mystery readers to show up from anywhere across the globe!

This blog explains how to host a mystery reader and provides templates and sign-up sheets to make a librarian’s workload just a little bit easier. Want to host a mystery author? Watch this presentation from the American Library Association that will give you all the info on how to get author’s into your library and penguinclassroom.com can help you get signed up for a virtual or in-person author visit.

Engage them with storytelling

Do you know a traditional oral storyteller in your local community? Read Across America is the perfect time to bring in community members with the power of storytelling!  While reading a book to students is one way to share literacy, live storytelling is a rich cultural tradition that also provides literacy benefits to listeners and is another wonderful way to connect your community, any time of year.

Storytelling is great for literacy skills, too. In this study from the Association for Library Service to Children, just one storytelling session provided practice of various literacy skills like visualization, cognitive engagement, critical thinking and story sequencing. In addition, sharing stories allows us to emotionally connect with others and builds a sense of trust. The Empathy Museum’s Clare Patey says, “Stories have a transformative power to allow us to see the world in a different way than we do if we just encounter it on our own. Stories are an entry point to understanding a different experience of the world.”

Live storytelling is also an activity that goes over well with every audience and can be tailored to any theme you may choose to focus on for Read Across America. From the stories of students to local historians, anyone and everyone can share their story. For specific storytelling event ideas, The National Education Association offers this resource on all different kinds of ways to play with stories this March. 

Explore diverse titles through a multicultural book tasting

Is it time to host a book tasting in your school library? As many educators and librarians know from experience, these fun events are low-budget and don’t take too much planning but offer big takeaways and are another great method to get good books into the hands of students and broaden their horizons. 

Since National Read Across America focuses on celebrating a nation of diverse readers, combining a book tasting that samples books from a variety of cultures is a wonderful way to do just that. This blog offers tons of advice from teachers and librarians who have already done book tastings and Staying Cool in the Library is a blog that will give you the ins and outs on how to do a book tasting just right. This librarian’s blog is also a good source for book tasting ideas. If you’d like pre-curated ideas on book selections for your school library’s book tasting event, feel free to browse through JLG’s category Multicultural Elementary.

Journey into space with STEM

If the imagination knows no bounds, then launch your student’s imaginations into another dimension with stories from space! After all, nothing quite captivates learners of all ages like the mystery of the cosmos, which is why National Read Across America Day is a great time to introduce STEM topics to your elementary and middle school readers. The educational program storytime from space is a fascinating way to have storytime, where astronauts read stories live from the ISS National Laboratory (You can also start off your STEM space exploration with a live story from this International Space Station link as well.)

This free program offers a view of the international space station where students can not only watch live book readings but meet the scientists and also watch science demonstrations that complement the content in Story Time From Space. These experiments cover topics such as Earth and space observation, engineering and robotics, human health and biology, life sciences and much more. They also have learn-at-home activities with free lesson plans and activities that can be incorporated into a whole event!

Looking for a good book series to accompany this idea? Check out Blasting Through the Solar System!: Albert Hopper, Science Hero #2. Also, if you are a public librarian  wanting to enhance learning opportunities through programming, check out this STEM education initiative NASA@mylibrary.

Get to know their favorite authors

Celebrate Read Across America this March and keep the stories going with storytelling straight from the author’s themselves! Author studies not only provide the opportunity for students to discover different types of literary styles, they also allow students to develop research skills as well as reading, writing and critical thinking skills.

Reading Rockets offers a comprehensive video library of 130 engaging interviews from top children's authors and illustrators, as well as an entire resource guide dedicated to planning an author study project that includes a sample author study. They’ve done most of the planning for the author study, making this event one that should be pretty painless to implement!

For elementary school librarians, consider an author study recommended by the National Education Association with the book Jump At the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston. 

Enhance their reading skills with physical literacy

A healthy mind starts with a healthy body, and students will jump at the opportunity to move beyond library walls and get outside for Read Across America. A StoryWalk® is one way to bring stories outdoors while also promoting health, exercise and movement by pacing out a children's story alongside a walking route or path of your choice. 

Over 300 public libraries in the U.S. and Canada have already participated in StoryWalk® programs and there are plenty of resources on how to go about putting together your own, you can even print a free Storywalk title here.

Motivate reluctant readers with tech

For students who need an extra dose of motivation, sometimes encouraging the love of reading through electronic devices can be the best strategy. E-readers, tablets and ebooks are great tools for reluctant readers to build confidence in their reading abilities and provide the benefit of being able to control print size, as well as the instant access to pronunciation and meaning of words. Therefore whatever activities you plan for Read Across America, allow for tablets and e-readers to also have a place in the celebration. For example, if you plan on doing a book tasting as an event for National Read Across America Day, then incorporate your library’s digital collection into their course offerings! 

If your school library needs to build it’s digital collection, JLG can help you with that through JLG Digital, which offers unlimited access to JLG Gold Standard eBooks and audiobooks from any device, at any time.

Finally, the National Education Association provides a Read Across America Promotional Toolkit for librarians to promote their Read Across America events and activities, as well as this extensive list of Free Resources and Materials from NEA. 

We hope this list serves as a good launching pad to help make your Read Across America and National Reading Month one that students and librarians will remember for years to come. 

Happy storytelling!