In the Central Elementary School auditorium, children from first through fifth grade filled the room for the end of their National Read Across America Week with their Friday community meeting, where they watched videos about favorite books, celebrated their accomplishments throughout the week and watched teachers have a little indoor snowball fight with soft yarn balls.
In honor of National Read Across America Day, as well as Dr. Seuss Day, instead of celebrating one day, Central School made Read Across America an annual weeklong celebration, this year held from March 2 through March 6. Students celebrated each day with different reading activities while having to read a cumulative total of 32,000 minutes for Monday through Thursday, which ended on Friday with a community meeting where they learned they beat their goal with 45,227 minutes.
“Read Across America is an annual event that we celebrate in school. We do it to motivate our kids to read and raise awareness of reading and the importance of reading. Reading is something that can create life-long successful readers and learners beyond the walls of this school,” Central School Principal Shannon Simkus said.
Central Elementary School celebrates Read Across America Week each year to show the importance of reading. Reading is something that is a foundation of learning, but that isn’t the only thing that is important with reading. Central School librarian Jessica Miller wants children to want to read and love to read because reading opens endless possibilities.
“I think reading is probably the most important thing we can teach our children, and it’s not so much how to read as wanting to read and loving to read. That is what this week really focuses on. Reading can be fun if you find the right books that are interesting and enjoyable to you. And once those kids find those books that really bring their imagination to life, it shows them that they can go anywhere and aren’t limited by anything but themselves,” Miller said. “Reading will get them to try new things and the courage to try new things. They will always be growing and going to new places if they read.”
The week was coordinated by Miller and the Read Across America committee. This year’s theme was “Grab Your Hat and Read with a Cat,” based on the book “The Cat in the Hat,” so almost everything was centered around that. From Monday to Thursday, students had to read 32,000 minutes, which is a total of 20 minutes per student per day, to reach their goal. They kept track of student reading by writing how much they read each day on a hat. This year, if the goal was met, they’d get to watch the teachers have a big snowball fight.
Every day of the week had a fun dress-up activity and reading activity for students. Monday was wear your crazy hat to school day and read a Dr. Seuss book.
Tuesday, students wore sports attire and were asked to team up with students in other classes to read together. Wednesday was wear red and white to school and teachers read “The Cat in the Hat” to their classes.
Thursday, which was postponed to Monday, March 9 due to snow, allowed students to wear their pajamas to school and bring a stuffed animal to read to. From 2:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. everyone, including teachers and faculty, took the half hour to read a book.
“Every year, the kids love this week; it’s their favorite week. Each day, they have something different to wear and something fun to do.
“Kids really thoroughly enjoy the focus on reading and excitement that comes with reading. If we instill that at a young age, it transcends when they’re older,” Simkus said.
On Friday, everyone came together to watch videos on their favorite books, which included a section of readers across the world and a presentation of first graders showcasing their technology skills using Chatterpix and making their crazy hats come alive and talk about their favorite book.
Then, special guest visitor Gene Kain, Haddonfield’s Citizen of the Year, led students in the “Oath of Lifelong Readers,” where students and staff took an oath to be lifelong readers, and each student will receive a certificate of participation.
Miller, dressed up as the Cat in the Hat, then revealed that students read a total of 45,227 minutes, beating their goal by a landslide. For passing their goal, faculty members came on stage and paired off to throw “snowballs” into baskets. What started out as a fun game turned into a silly snowball fight where faculty just threw the yarn balls at each other and then into the audience of students, getting everyone involved and laughing.
“I hope that kids take away that reading is fun and can take them places. And that reading is something they can do any time, in any setting. We as a school think this is such an important week, because we have the ability to create a love of learning and a love of reading,” Simkus said.
