Top 5 Ideas for Read Across America

Read Across America is a great day to celebrate READING in your classroom!  Here are FIVE fun and inexpensive ways to celebrate Read Across America Day in your classroom!

One of the best things to do is to let students READ on Read Across America Day! I know that is a crazy idea, but sometimes we get so caught up in everything that we HAVE to do, that we forget to let our students READ.  Students will only become better readers the more time that they have to read! I love giving an EXTENDED period of time, or even multiple times during the day for students to just READ and enjoy their reading!

Dressing up is one of my favorite things to do! Anything that gets me thinking outside of the box, and showing off my sprit! We created these "Thing 1" shirts with our grade levels!  Our librarian had these awesome hats, and then thanks to the Target Dollar Spot we were able to make this adorable background! Each of our students were given one of these hats too, so we were able to use this wall a a photo backdrop for them too! Make sure to check out Target as we get closer to March for great finds!

Having students create their own Dr. Seuss story is a fun way for them to appreciate all of the fun books that Dr. Seuss wrote! There are so many characters that they can continue to help tell the stories! Or they can take his fun and adventure and create their own characters as well!

If your school will allow it, then help your students be comfortable! We have PJ day as a dress up day, and then we allow our students to bring in pillows and blankets.  They get to wear slippers in the classroom too! We have them change into tennis shoes before we leave the classroom, or go to specials. It adds an extra element of special to the day, and helps students be nice and cozy as they read!

Obviously if you are going to be reading more than normal that day, you may want to have a GREAT selection of books!  I always bring in way more than we could read for the day, but that gives students even more exposure to books they may not have read before!  We are a big AR school too, so I make sure to put a post it on the book, with the quiz number.  Then they can write their name on the post it after they take their quiz, and we know how many quizzes we've taken that day!

I hope that this will help you make your Read Across America Day great, and if you have any other amazing ideas to share I would love to hear them!!