The students at my elementary school (K-5) enjoy having a Mystery Reader over the morning announcements. I ask a member of the staff to tape an excerpt from a Dr. Seuss book. Each class has one guess. The first class who sends the correct answer receives a prize, such as a book for their classroom library.
Jamee Hall, Reading Specialist
Matoaca Elementary School
"Worry less about losing books to children and more about losing children to literacy."
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
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From: mosaic-bounces at literacyworkshop.org on behalf of Domina.Natasha
Sent: Fri 2/27/2009 7:48 AM
To: mosaic at literacyworkshop.org
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Read Across America
One Read Across America activity I like to do with students to integrate in some geography is to have students (I have 4th and 5th graders) look through books they've read and other books in the classroom and mark their settings on a map (when I've done this in the past I've had one map of the U.S., since that's the focus, and also one map of the world, since some books take place in other countries). Then there's a variety of follow-up activities that can be done--you could talk about regions of the U.S. and check to see whether the class has found books that represent each region...you could also try to find a book that took place each state....you could look at the world map and see where the majority of books the class has read take place to lead into a discussion of Euro-centrism and why there are so many fewer books that represent other cultures around the world.....
Another fun Read Across America activity is just to get several classes together in a big space and have everyone lounge around and read for a chunk of time. (A mass "read-in")
One last activity I find fun is to share first and last lines of books with students and have them try to figure out what books they come from. (Sometimes I provide the list. Other years I have students write down the beginning and ending lines of a book they think others will be familiar with and I compile those into our list.--That allows even not-so well-read students to be sure of getting at least one right answer!)
I'm looking forward to reading others' suggestions.
Natasha