In this issue, our Raleigh County Chapter took over Ten to Try! Longtime Raleigh volunteers, Ruth Baker, Ann Cline, and Judy Robinson reviewed and recommended the following books.
The Wall in the Middle of this Book
By Jon Agee
There is a wall in the middle of this book that is supposed to protect one side of the book from the other side. Supposed to. This story elicits enthusiastic discussions.
Grades K-4
Insectlopedia
By Douglas Florian
Delightful art and poems about insects for all grades. Bring it along as an addition to your read aloud selection.
The Quickest Kid in Clarksville
By Pat Zietlow Miller
As they wait for Wilma Rudolph’s hometown parade to celebrate her three olympic gold medals, two girls challenge each other to a race. Conflict turns to cooperation.
Grades 1-3
The Eye of the Whale: A Rescue Story
By Jennifer O’Connell
A true story about saving a humpback. Dramatic pictures.
Grades 2-4
Stick and Stone
By Beth Ferry
Friendship matters. An enchantingly simple story for PreK and up.
Rotten Ralph
By Jack Gantos
A Read Aloud hit that appeals to children’s fascination with tales of misbehavior.
Grades 2-4
Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race
By Margot Lee Shetterly
An ode to Mathematicians, including one from West Virginia. Why did the extraordinary contribution of these women remain hidden for so long?
Grades 4-5
Lulu and the Brontosaurus (The Lulu series)
By Judith Viorst
We read this in first grade, and they loved it and laughed. We are not all perfect, and we can change.
Grades 1-3
A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars
By Seth Fishman
Math in gigantic form! How many trees in the world? How many ants? Can you imagine so many…of anything? A visual illustration of estimation.
Grades 3-5
The Day you Begin
By Jacqueline Woodson
This book celebrates the bravery it takes to go forth even when you feel like an outsider.
As the President of the Marion County Chapter of Read Aloud West Virginia, you might assume I was always a great reader. I even have my Master’s Degree in Reading; therefore, it sounds a little crazy when I say that I didn’t believe reading was “fun” until I became an adult.
Reading as a child was never easy for me, no matter how hard I tried. I would practice regularly, but it just never seemed easy or enjoyable. I had many smart friends who were great readers and excelled in school. They were always in the “Blue Birds” reading group, reserved for the best readers. I always made good grades, but reading didn’t come easily to me the way it did for my friends. I strived to be a “Blue Bird” and achieved my goal for a short time, until being demoted again. I wondered what was wrong with me.
I remember my dad and grandmother reading stories to me when I was growing up, and I loved it! My grandmother was a teacher, and she read with many voices and a lot of inflection. But when I tried to read to myself, I read very slowly and had to reread things over and over to understand and make sense of the story.
Even so, I really wanted to be a teacher just like my grandmother. I worked hard to get the grades I needed to get a degree in elementary education. I realized that reading should be easier than it was, so I decided to also get a certificate to teach children with learning disabilities. I reasoned that if I studied this field, I would learn strategies that would not only help me better educate the children in my care but would also help me to improve my own reading experiences. I learned a lot, and I did see an improvement in my own reading comprehension, but it was still difficult.
There had to be more. I decided to get my Master’s in Reading from WVU, and this is what turned the corner for me. In my Master’s program, I discovered how enjoyable and fun reading could be, especially when reading books I chose! I found myself excited about reading and teaching reading to others. I am so glad that I didn’t give up, because I truly love to read now. I like to read for information, pleasure, and for self-help. I also read to my granddaughter all the time and many other children too! I even create read aloud videos for children to enjoy. Quite the turnaround from where I started!
Please know that if reading is hard for you or your child, I’m positive you are NOT the only one going through this. Yes, practice always helps. Creating pictures in your mind of what you are reading is important. Experiences are helpful when you think about how what you already know relates to what you are reading.
But, perhaps the most important thing is choice! Find a book that you or your child is interested in reading and read it! You will be surprised how much enjoyment and growth can come from spending time in a good book. You may struggle and get discouraged when comparing yourself to others like I did, but I hope you won’t give up. Reading is magical, and it can take you to places you never realized were there. Take it from someone who’s been there — it’s worth the effort.
Children need us now more than ever. By us, I mean Read Aloud West Virginia, formally, of course – our classroom readers, our book distributions. But children also need us in general, their community.
Every week we hear from teachers. In addition to everything they struggle with this year, they ask how they can fit it all in. How can we get children to engage with books outside of the school day?
This is where the community comes in.
Read Aloud works on this a lot. Our community volunteers take time each week not only to show up and be present to read to children, but also to read ahead and practice and stay on the lookout for books their classes will enjoy. Our chapters come together to plan events and book distributions that give children, their families, and their schools opportunities to find and share books to love.
Every child needs this – people around them who believe, and show that they believe, that books are important. They need people who set the example in busy, distracted times for the brain and soul nourishing activity of reading.
Learning to read is often thought of as a set of skills, write Pam Allyn and Ernest Morrell in Every Child a Super Reader (Scholastic, 2016).
“And while it’s certainly true that children must learn to orchestrate a complex set of strategic actions that enable comprehension and decoding, it’s equally true that learning to read is a social-cultural event,” they write. “In other words, learning to read is more than simple skill building. Children also become readers when they are immersed in a community of readers, surrounded by rich book talk and animated demonstrations of reading, and provided with the social-emotional support that enables them to become members of the ‘literacy club’.”
When they say, “super readers,” they don’t mean just a test score. They talk about academic achievement, but also personal fulfillment, social well-being and civic engagement. Super readers enter a text with a purpose. They grow confident. They take risks, and they learn to discuss and expound on what they read.
As you see throughout this newsletter, Read Aloud is helping to fill needs exacerbated by shortened and interrupted school schedules. We are offering our classrooms virtual “Book Tastings,” where students can have rich book talk, and then choose more books to keep. We have been building Read Aloud Families, to help children to build their home libraries and to nurture family habits that will grow super readers.
On January 13, thanks to Scholastic, our chapters will come together for a virtual conference featuring Pam Allyn. Here, our volunteers will share some rich book talk of their own and carry knowledge and inspiration out to their communities.
Children, their families, and teachers respond to these efforts. They send pictures and thank-you’s. They tell us children are eager when their packages arrive. Children ask for the next book in a series and recommend books to their friends, cousins, and to us. With our steady example, they are growing into a community of readers.
September 17 was a special day in the Parks family. It was the day Cristi Parks celebrated her mother Kay Parks’ birthday before she passed. This September, Cristi felt called to do something to honor her mother’s memory, and that is how Read Aloud learned about Kay Parks.
Born and raised in Wetzel County, Kay was a force for literacy and creativity in her community. She loved to read to children at her local elementary school, and, as a gifted musician, she could often be found playing the organ at a local church or teaching a child to play the piano. Kay’s passion for serving her community lives on in her daughter, who had the idea to honor her mother by gathering donations from family members to give to a local organization that continued the work that was closest to Kay’s heart. The family has deep roots in Wetzel County, but many live out of state. Cristi hoped this might become an annual tradition to give back to their hometown around Kay’s September birthday.
Read Aloud West Virginia was selected as the organization to support because we work to instill a love of reading in children, just like Kay did. All donations directed to this project will be used in Wetzel County to continue to motivate local kids to read for fun by offering free, high quality books and magazines to children and families, with the long-term goal of connecting with new volunteers and establishing a Wetzel County Read Aloud chapter.
We are truly honored to have been chosen as the recipient of these memorial donations and are deeply touched by this new model of giving. With so many people forced to leave West Virginia in recent years, it’s heartening to meet a family dedicated to giving back to the place they come from and making it better for those that remain. This openhearted spirit bolsters our belief that by working together, across industries, counties, and communities, we can create a more literate, prosperous West Virginia.
Read Aloud West Virginia is offering a new way for teachers to put books in their students’ hands: a Virtual Book Tasting.
We’re calling it a “book tasting” because like a cake tasting, you get little samples of a bunch of options. Then students can make informed choices of books they get to keep.
Students also get opportunities to have meaningful conversations about what they read. They can recommend books to friends or warn them off. They can practice the habits of lifelong readers and learners – to read by choice and to discuss readings with colleagues.
“The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive,” literacy experts Richard Allington and Rachel Gabriel wrote in the 2012 article “Every Child, Every Day”. “Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read.”
Researchers also agree that giving students time to discuss books with peers is essential. According to the same Allington and Gabriel article, reading outcomes were better “when kids simply talked with a peer about what they read than when they spent the same amount of class time highlighting important information after reading.”
Our book tastings emphasize choice and create opportunities for students to chime in with opinions and questions. They even include a conversation starter “The Worst Book Ever,” in which a volunteer presents a popular book they don’t recommend, and participants are prompted to respond with their own opinions. This activity is intentionally designed to demonstrate to students that readers don’t love every book they crack open, and that it’s OK to quit a book they don’t enjoy and try something else. It is designed to welcome students who have not already discovered pleasure in reading, as well as avid readers.
After the book tasting, students will have an opportunity to choose a book from those discussed. We’ll pack the selected titles, tag them for each student, and arrange to deliver them to the school for distribution.
All schools enrolled with Read Aloud qualify for free book tastings and other book distributions, and because of pandemic pressures on school staff, all schools enrolled in the 2019-20 school year have been automatically re-enrolled with us for 2020-21, unless schools have notified us otherwise.
Click here to fill out an application to request books for your students. We look forward to hearing from you!
When schools sent students home for remote learning this spring, my mind immediately went to a 1951 Isaac Asimov short story The Fun They Had. I won’t ruin it for you. Just know that it is set in a future where kids are taught at home by a “mechanical teacher.”
We turn to stories for comfort in times of stress and challenge. Looking for help, our minds riffle through a lifetime of lessons, including those we “experienced” in books. The week before schools closed, I could not have recalled that story. But there it was, waiting in my head when the situation arose.
That well of experiences is filled over a lifetime. Volume matters.
Asimov was not the only past-read that has offered insight for the times we’re managing now. Here are a few things I have been reading (and rereading):
The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller is the story of how a sixth-grade Texas reading teacher requires students to read 40 books in the school year, and offers all kinds of choice and help for students so they find books they enjoy. Then she watches their confidence, grades and test scores rise.
Reading in the Wild, also by Donalyn Miller, is her follow up on efforts to raise “wild” readers, or those who read because they are motivated from the inside, not because a teacher or parent is nagging, grading, rewarding or punishing them.
Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina and Passion in Adolescent Readers by Penny Kittle is the advice of a then-high school (now college) instructor who echoes that volume matters. Children, and then adolescents, and then adults develop those very qualities — depth, stamina and passion. It takes volume, which is possible if students find books they enjoy.
How Humans Learn by Joshua Eyeler informs on that precise subject. The most relevant chapter at the moment is the one that says anxiety turns learning off.
Students, like all of us, are learning things, whether consciously or not. If children are reading or hearing books they enjoy, they are learning words and facts. This certainly helps them to read better on their own, or when they must read something they don’t particularly enjoy.
Children exposed to at least one book every day also learn how language works, how it fits together, which helps them to write better when it is their turn. They learn empathy; and social and emotional maturity are factors in school success. But children, like adults, also store up insights and lessons. If they read regularly and hear books read aloud, they fill a well of wisdom they don’t even know they possess. But it will surface when they need it, like the Room of Requirement.
That well is filled a little every day. As with compound interest or growing a tree, time is an indispensable ingredient. So, if there are children around, and your family doesn’t have a reading habit, now is the time. Every day matters. Little kids, big kids, grandkids, it is not too late to start. Reading will look different for different ages and families. That’s OK.
Take it from Mary Kay Bond and Sara Busse. I love that interview for the permission to not be perfect. Don’t think reading or reading aloud really looks like a carefully posed Pinterest shot. It usually doesn’t.
No one knows exactly how the fall semester will go, but it will go differently in different places. Some days, if all that parents, teachers and volunteers can manage safely and angst-free is reading to the children in their lives, or helping them to find books they enjoy, then everyone will be on task and making progress. Research shows reading for pleasure is the most effective way for students to prevent learning loss when school is out. Just as importantly, those students will be adding to their lifetime volume of experiences to draw on some day.
That moment of need could be coping with a pandemic. Or it could be a school writing assignment. It could be navigating a death in the family, or it could be navigating a job opportunity.
Students are soaking up knowledge about something every day. Sometimes, as with me and Asimov, they won’t even know they are carrying the lesson until they need it. Then it will just be there. But only if their wells have been diligently filled in advance.
Read Aloud West Virginia has received a sizeable number of Neighborhood Investment Program (NIP) Tax Credits. NIP credits are administered by the state to encourage donations to local nonprofits.
For example, a donation of $1,000 qualifies for up to $500 in NIP credits off of West Virginia personal income or corporate net income taxes. That means donors can have a $1,000 impact for a bottom-line cost of only $500.
Read Aloud’s mission is to motivate children to read for fun, which research shows makes kids better readers and has a large impact on academic and career success. Every dollar donated to Read Aloud results in more time spent coordinating with families, schools, and volunteers to get kids the tools they need to grow their reading skills. And the sooner donors give, the better, according to Communications & Development Director, Amanda Schwartz.
“Donations in the fall enable us to plan ahead for literacy projects in the spring and summer,” Schwartz says. “The earlier we have funding in hand, the more impact we can make. Also, credits are administered first-come, first-served, until they run out.”
Read Aloud has remained on mission throughout the pandemic, adapting book distributions and volunteer classroom reading efforts to meet the new conditions and needs. “We are busier than ever, and our donors make all this work possible,” says Executive Director Dawn Miller.
If you’re interested in giving early and helping Read Aloud improve the literacy climate in WV, you can:
Mail a check to Read Aloud WV, PO Box 1784, Charleston, WV 25326 (this is preferred, as there are no fees associated with your donation and Read Aloud receives the full amount to put towards programs).
Click the Donate button at readaloudwv.org to make a secure donation through Square.
The minimum donation to qualify for a tax credit is $500 and the maximum is $200,000. Donors have five years to use their credits. The maximum tax credit allowed in any one year is $100,000. Donors cannot reduce their total state tax bill by more than 50%. If you have any questions, contact Read Aloud headquarters at (304)345-5212.
Here’s a checklist to build — or strengthen — your family’s reading habits
By Dawn Miller
Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, writes that habits have three parts – a cue, a routine and a reward. Something cues us. We perform the routine, and then comes the reward, which may be just a chemical reaction in the brain that feels like pleasure. But the next time we get that cue, we are likely to perform the same routine.
Alex’s bookshelf is in the corner of the family room.
Read Aloud supporter Matt Schwartz reads grandson Alex a bedtime story.
Does your family have reading habits? Experience the pleasure and build yours with this checklist of cues and routines:
Books – some we own, some from the library. Children cannot form a reading habit without books.
A place for books. It can be a low shelf that children can reach. It can be a box, basket or bin, but they must be handy and in sight (not tucked away out of reach).
Light, the right light. Be honest. Is the on switch easy to reach? If it isn’t, you’ll resist turning it on and getting started. Does it glare and hurt your eyes? Is it too dim to see well? If it is a hassle or uncomfortable, it will interfere with building your reading habits.
Comfortable spot, with room for two or three, or even more. Plus other places where children can read on their own, where they can be free of the TV or computer screens long enough to get pulled into a book.
Time — a set time. Set a reminder if necessary until it becomes a habit. Look for reading cues that fit in your day and into children’s rhythms. Before bed works for a lot of people. During a bath? After a bath? After dinner? First thing in the morning?
Screens off. Devices away. Make a quiet space for the imagination to take over during a regular time that works for your family, and the cue-routine-reward pattern will have a chance to take hold.
At the end of every school year, we ask our volunteer readers to tell us about their experience and share some books that worked well in their classrooms. Here are some favorites!
Freedom Soup by Tami Charles
“I have found children enjoy learning about other cultures.”
— Derniere Marshall, Jefferson County
A Week in the Woods by Andrew Clements
“I highly recommend A Week in the Woods by Andrew Clements! I read this to a 5th grade class after asking the classroom teacher if she had any recommendations of stories she thought her students would enjoy. She was spot-on with this recommendation! The students were mesmerized by the story! Their recall of what they had heard the prior week was amazing…recalling many details and responding without prompts! This story held their interest, had many twists in the storyline, and included humor and compassion.”
— Kathleen (Kathy) Bennett, Berkeley County
I Am a Bee: A Book about Bees for Kids by Rebecca and James McDonald
“I used a hand puppet (Bee) and the children (PreK) loved interacting with the puppet. Had I been able to read again I would have used my possum puppet.”
— Paulette J. Buzbee, Raleigh County
Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman
A madcap story with pirates, piranhas, adventure, aliens, time travel and breakfast cereal.
— Margaret (Meg) Squier, Greenbrier County
Painter and Ugly by Robert J. Blake
“I always try to make the kids laugh. I hope my choice of books is interesting so it keeps their attention.” — Cathy Shaffer, Preston County
Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown
“Every year I pick up second-hand books and arrange a couple of situations where I distribute a book to each member of the class… It’s especially nice when some of the books I have are ones I’ve read to the class and the kids are eager to get those titles. This year I read Flat Stanley and then during their Trunk or Treat event at Halloween, I set up a Flat Stanley display. It turned out really cool and I was able to find numerous Flat Stanley books for the kids to choose from and keep.”
— Judy Hurst, Marion County
The Star People: A Lakota Story by S.D. Nelson
Two children stray from their village and are helped by their deceased grandmother, one of the Star People.
— Sandra Summers, Jackson County
Creepy Pair of Underwear! by Aaron Reynolds
“I look forward to reading exciting and interesting stories to the children this fall, hopefully, in the traditional classroom setting. It’s such an enjoyable experience.”
— Crystal Morgan, Mason County
The Cay by Theodore Taylor
“I always do an activity with the students after reading the book. For example, after The Cay, I brought in coconuts and we cracked them and tasted the milk and flesh. Very few of the students had ever seen a real coconut before. After a book on Helen Keller, I teach them braille and sign language.”
— Sheila Amato, Preston County
Tanka Tanka Skunk! by Steve Webb
“A hit with both my first grade readers as well as my fourth grade readers. I brought egg shakers for every student and we made the Tanka Tanka beats together. I had to start bringing it every week!”
Do your best to stay on mission, while keeping yourself and your communities safe. That is the advice Read Aloud volunteers, chapter leaders and colleagues have traded back and forth since spring. Keep up the good work.
By Dawn Miller
Read Aloud West Virginia continued to work all spring and summer toward the mission of motivating children to read for fun, to nourish their reading skills for life.
Here’s how we’ll keep doing it.
Classroom readers
Brooks Bower tries out one of the new reading hammocks on the first day of Coda Engage, a project of Coda Mountain Academy in Fayette County. Read Aloud West Virginia is a partner, offering books for children to choose and to keep, and for the academy’s growing library.
In our regular end-of-school survey, teachers overwhelmingly said that they would welcome live, virtual read alouds from a dedicated volunteer, if in-person visits were not possible. Most often, these would occur via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, though individual schools or counties may have other preferences.
To assist returning readers, Read Aloud chapters have been working on their own video-conferencing skills, and developing an updated orientation (delivered virtually, of course) to help readers grow confident for reading this fall.
Virtual orientations can also be scheduled for new readers. Anyone interested in attending either type of orientation may call 304-345-5212 or email stateoffice@readaloudwv.org. Registration is required.
Some readers and teachers have favored pre-recorded videos. The Fayette County Chapter is establishing a studio for making read aloud videos, but most readers simply use their smartphones. (See tips, right)
Book distribution
Schools closed just when it was time to start one of our most important efforts, a distribution project called Summer Book Binge. Based on research that shows a bag of freely chosen books given at the end of the school year does more to prevent summer learning loss than summer school, Read Aloud has developed this project over years, starting in Greenbrier County, and then Raleigh and Fayette and this year Wood and Berkeley. The pre-pandemic model relied on multiple visits to schools and much in-person contact, including a school assembly where the books were delivered with great activity and enthusiasm.
With those options closed, Read Aloud quickly reorganized an order process by mail. A $10,000 in-kind matching grant from First Book made it possible for Read Aloud to send more than 7,000 books to the homes of 870 children in the five counties. Children got to choose their books, a key ingredient in motivation, according to research.
Lessons from that project, combined with the prolonged interruption to school and uncertainty about fall, suggested a way to serve children and their families this summer and beyond.
In July, we softly launched Read Aloud Families (with the help of partner Energy Express). Based on the same data and methods as our Book Binge, combined with research on habits and motivation, Read Aloud Families delivers monthly books — that children choose — and materials to motivate families to read together through the pandemic and beyond.
Membership is by invitation only for now, but we plan to expand it as capacity allows. Each chapter identifies groups of families to be invited, through schools or other organizations they work with. At this writing, more than 125 families had joined, with more than 250 children, all over the state.
Marion County chapter president Beverly Richards, loads her car up with magazines to distribute via local feeding sites.
In the future, chapters will organize events for members, virtually, as necessary, but perhaps outdoors if it can be done safely. These events will be opportunities for children and their families to share the books they love, recommend and receive recommendations, and grow their reading communities.
Meanwhile, chapters are distributing books by other means. Jefferson and Marion are among those providing books for families when they collect school meals. Nicholas and Jackson are making plans to restock Little Free Libraries or other community bookshelves.
Partnerships
Even before the pandemic WVU Extension and Read Aloud were exploring ways to work together on Energy Express, the federal program that provides both literacy opportunities, including reading aloud, and nutritional meals to children during summer break.
This summer, Energy Express staffers attended Read Aloud orientations (virtually, of course). Read Aloud offered the first memberships to Read Aloud Families to Energy Express participants. Families have joined from all over the state, even in counties where Read Aloud has no active chapter. Each one affirms their intention to read with children, just for fun, most days of each week. They agree to give children a choice of books to read and to protect children’s reading time.
In Fayette County, thanks to Fayette Chapter President Marion Tanner, Read Aloud has partnered with the Coda Mountain Academy. About 25 children had the opportunity to choose Read Aloud books of their own. Coda started as a music camp, but has grown into many fields, including science and art. This summer the academy completed its outdoor classroom, just in time for the need for physically distanced and outdoor learning spaces.
Ten new reading hammocks invite elementary-age children during Coda Engage, a summer day camp run by Coda Mountain Academy. Elsewhere, masked and physically spaced, children engage in other activities, including robotics and violin lessons.
Coda President Esther Morey said children were happy and relieved to be outside and to be together, even with modifications and safety rules.
As they were walking toward the first circle game, Morey told us one girl said, “That looks funner than being on my iPad and phone all day.”
