Shame on me for not posting yet about my “Read Around the World” program. I’m considering it to be one of my biggest successes this year. Why? Because my students are starting to read outside of their comfort zone!!!

“Read Around the World” may not have been the most fitting name, but it’s what I went with. Here’s the scoop on what we’re doing:

Students who are interested in participating picked up a “Reading Passport” from me in the library. I made it cute and colorful. On the inside is a 3×3 grid with different genres. Students are to read one book from each of the following categories: a picture book, a chapter book, an award winning book, an animal book, a science book, a book about a place they’ve never been, a folk or fairy tale, a biography, and a free book of whatever they want. So many kids were stuck in a series and weren’t reading anything else. My great geography, folk/fairy tale, and biography sections were getting so little love. I made a few catchy videos to promote the program, and let them come to me if they wanted to do this. It has been such a wonderful experience for the students, teachers, and myself. Are they all participating? No, but many (if not most) of them are and they’re actually reading some variety! So many times a day I’m asked where the biographies (pronounced beeographies by so many of them) are. And they love it! They’re telling me about the things they’re learning about other states they’re reading about. Teachers are commenting on how much this is expanding their knowledge base and how they hear them talking about what they’ve read with other students. The first week in May I’m going to have a drawing of all of the completed passports and a student will get the entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid set. Plus I got some bookmarks from Raising Canes for a free kid’s combo, so I’m giving those out to students who turn in their completed passports.

As I’m sure you can tell, I’m so proud and totally pumped about the results from this program. My awesome assistant principal shared this new free tool called Prezi with me the other day. I had to play around with it, of course, and I created a little Prezi for read around the world — check it out below. You’ve got to click here and actually see how Prezi works. It’s quite a nifty presentation tool.