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
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.
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.
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.”