LitCamp Tour: Super Reader Road Trip Begins!

LitWorld's founder, Pam Allyn, is embarking on the LitCamp Tour: Super Reader Road Trip starting on February 14th! Pam will speak at schools and meet with top administrators to talk about the importance and value of summer learning, and LitCamp's restorative magical values and solutions.

Scholastic is officially sponsoring the trip and will be tweeting and instagramming the journey.

Pam will travel by car with her dog Dewey in the passenger seat. They will journey through the U.S. along a southern route, stopping in Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

The tour will last approximately a month and should be very exciting! Pam is hoping to build even more national awareness for the power of LitCamps and to enroll thousands more children on her way for the LitWorld movement!

Stay tuned for updates from Pam's journey.

Say Hello to Our Newest Sponsor, Storiarts!

We are excited to welcome Storiarts to our big LitWorld family as our newest sponsor. Below, the Storiarts team writes from Oregon, U.S.A.

Hello LitWorld friends! We are Storiarts, the creators of the Book Scarf, Writing Gloves, and other literary home goods and apparel. Our audience attracts creative-minded, compassionate avid readers and writers, which is why we set out to find a long-term charity to sponsor that cultivates a love of reading and writing worldwide.

We share LitWorld’s vision to strengthen children and communities through the power of their own stories and to connect people with the love of books, which is why we are so excited that now every Storiarts purchase helps children worldwide learn to read, write, and create. The next chapter in our story is helping kids write their own.

It was a few weeks before Christmas Day in 2011 and our founder Tori Tissell had just graduated from Pratt Institute. In typical recent grad fashion, she was struggling to buy gifts for her family, so she turned to creativity.

Combining her affinity for fashion and inherent love for the literary classics, Tori created the very first Storiarts product: The Pride and Prejudice Book Scarf. Within several months, it became clear that this idea was more than just a one-time hand-crafted gift. It was a product that people wanted in their lives to relive their most treasured stories.

Storiarts was created by husband and wife team, Chris and Tori Tissell. From 2011 to present day, we’ve built our team from one to ten, and we continue to connect people with their love of books - one literary good at a time. We’ve expanded our product line to a multitude of literary items including gloves, t-shirts, infant apparel, headbands, pillows, and totes.

We hope to continuously provide LitClub Members with books and writing supplies for one year, and follow along various LitClubs across the globe. We plan to participate and advocate World Read Aloud Day, which advocates for literacy as a human right that belongs to all people. Our ultimate goal is to strengthen children and communities through the power of their own stories and to connect people with the love of books.

Pam Allyn Talks Reading Aloud With Doctor Radio

On Friday, January 12th, our founder Pam Allyn spoke live with the hosts of Doctor Radio's "Child Psychiatry/Psychology: About Our Kids" program on Sirius XM.

"Reading has always been about that idea of personal freedom and taking chances in very safe spaces," said Pam, "I find a personal power in what I read—narrative is a comfort and an inspiration, and I want all children to have that."

The program included a lively discussion of child brain development, early literacy skills, educational tools, and LitWorld's signature day of advocacy: World Read Aloud Day.

"Books don't always have to be this heavy thing for kids where they worry about taking a test after reading them," Pam said, "At some point, reading is hard for all of us. For children who struggle with reading, we must ask them what it would take to make it easier. Some will answer that the book they're reading is boring or difficult to follow—these are very different answers, and they require different approaches from parents and teachers."

The program is available to stream on-demand now.

Shannon Miller's World Read Aloud Day

One of my favorite events every year is LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day.  This year we are celebrating on February 1st, 2018.

Over the last eight years, I have read, celebrated, learned, connected and created with others around the world in honor of World Read Aloud Day and literacy.  

One of the best parts of World Read Aloud Day for me are the connections that libraries and school communities make with other children, teachers, librarians, authors, illustrators, and friends from around the world.  Whether it is listening to them read, reading a book together, or singing along to the words, the celebration of reading aloud is what we lift up on this day.

When I was in the Van Meter Library, we connected with several of our favorite authors over the years, including Seymour Simon, Tom Angelberger, Cece Bell, Erica Perl, Donna Gephart, Laurel Synder, Jesse Klausmeier, and many others.

We Skyped with our friends in Iowa, Georgia, Chicago, Florida, Philadelphia, New York, Texas, Connecticut, Australia, China, Oman and others around the world.

During one of our visits to a school in Florida this year, we will be having a little "Pig Party," including farm themed books and eBooks—and a visit with a special Iowa friend named Bacon, a pot-bellied pig.  

The Collaborative Google Doc

As you and your school community plan World Read Aloud Day, Andy Plemmons, Matthew Winner and myself have created a Google Document for all of us to start making plans with others around the world. This year we have done something that will be super helpful to all of you: there is now a Table of Contents for Time Zones, which will help when connecting and planning. Teachers and WRAD participants can click on the time zone that they want and the page will jump forward to the proper place in the Google Doc. Underneath a particular time zone, there is an area for users to add their information.

The World Read Aloud Day 2018 Google Doc can be found here.

Skype in the Classroom + Buncee

I also have a very special new project to share with you, from two of my favorite educational resources to use as a teacher and librarian, Buncee and Skype in the Classroom.

This year, Skype in the Classroom and Buncee are joining forces to celebrate World Read Aloud Day with a global literacy peace project for your library, classroom, and community.

 As Buncee's Teacher Librarian Advocate and a Skype Master Teacher, I couldn't be more excited to share this news and to tell you how you and your students can be part of this project too.

It is called the Skype + Buncee Literacy Project! It is our brand new Buncee Buddies project to kick off 2018. Students will be collaborating, creating and sharing poems with an answer to the question, How Do I Model Peace In My Community?

As shared on the project page on the Skype in the Classroom site:

Words have the power to change our world. Reading & writing have the power to build bridges, foster understanding, and spark ideas. For World Read Aloud Day 2018, Skype in the Classroom and Buncee are asking you to join classrooms from all around to celebrate literacy by coming together to read, write, and spread peace.

Go to the Skype + Buncee Literacy Project page to read all of the details and register to join.

We are already sharing on the #skypebunceebuddies hashtag on social media, and don't forget to use the official hashtag, #WorldReadAloudDay, in your posts too.  

Students' poems will be added to the Skype + Buncee Literacy Project Buncee Board, and I can't wait to read and share them too. You will find our Buncee Board here. 

Remember, be creative and have fun with this project.

LitWorld would love for us to connect with authors through Skype in the Classroom for World Read Aloud Day, and this project is now part of the wonderful ways we can connect using Skype.  

The sky is the limit and the possibilities to connect are endless. We will celebrate literacy while connecting and creating for World Read Aloud Day globally throughout the year with Buncee and Skype in the Classroom. 

Empower your students to share peace in the community and throughout the world in 2018 by being part of our project too! 

Have a wonderful time planning World Read Aloud Day, friends. I hope we get to connect too.

Shannon McClintock Miller is a teacher-librarian who serves as the Future Ready Librarians and Project Connect Spokesperson working with librarians, educators and students around the country, in person and online every day. She is Buncee's Teacher Librarian Advisor and Cantata Learning's Teacher Librarian Advocate. Shannon is the author of the award-winning The Library Voice blog and recently published her first four children’s books about library skills with Cantata Learning. And her most favorite thing: she is blessed mom and wife.  

Bridging Communities With the WRAD-ical Power of Tech

This year, World Read Aloud Day is on February 1st.

Thanks to a growing list of partners and sponsors, this global holiday has reached hundreds of thousands of kids and their parents and teachers in over 100 countries.

In 2018, the advent of technology in the classroom—seen as a novel innovation only a few years ago—has become commonplace in many schools, and it's changing the way we celebrate the joy of reading aloud in a big way.

Schedule a Read-Aloud With An Author in Your Classroom

This year, Skype in the Classroom has made it easier than ever to book a virtual author visit to a classroom anywhere on the planet through their website. Make your World Read Aloud Day truly memorable for your students by interacting with a real, live Children's Literature author.

Students in Brooklyn, New York celebrate World Read Aloud Day 2017 by donning their self-made Reading Crowns.

Coordinate with Other Educators And Bring Classrooms Together

Teachers and fans of World Read Aloud Day have banded together to create an expansive, community-run Google Doc, and it is being used to organize cooperative read-aloud events in celebration of the holiday. Introduce your students to a new classroom via the internet, read aloud to each other, ask each other questions, and empower your communities.

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Tools like video chat and community-built Google Docs have spurred World Read Aloud Day's growth, making it a truly worldwide celebration of community, humanity, storytelling, and joy.

For more information and useful resources, visit litworld.org/wrad.

A New Model of Collaboration: Partnership Coordinator Conference

Shooting stars to Mentor Mainor at the first-ever PCC.

LitWorld coordinated and hosted its first-ever Latin American Partnership Coordinator Conference at the beginning of October in Colombia, as part of our ongoing efforts to deepen the connection between partners and provide opportunities for learning across organizations. Currently, LitWorld has seven partnerships in Spanish-speaking Latin America: two in Colombia, two in Nicaragua, and one each in the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Honduras.  

The Partnership Coordinator Conference (PCC) served as a powerful tool to strengthen the LitWorld community. It provided training to the Partnership Coordinators and a mentor from each attending organization, a space for each partner to share their own work and expertise, and a forum where organizations could learn from one another’s experience.

Each day began with a unique community-building activity and was followed by a series of trainings. These included modules on the role of a Partnership Coordinator, key components of mentorship, setting goals as leaders and in programming, techniques to lead training workshops, using visual art as a storytelling tool, how to cultivate mentors as storytellers, techniques for reading aloud, and strategies for creating their own stories to supplement their program libraries. Each partner also had an hour scheduled during the week to share their organization’s work, expertise, and history, as well as a programming activity that could be shared across all organizations.

We received some amazing feedback from our coordinators that show the powerful, magical outcomes of the week:

“It was a wonderful meeting of learning, collaboration, fun, companionship, and shared dreams.”

“I would like to have this type of meeting more regularly since one can grow even more. Thanks for such a good and great opportunity, thanks on behalf of all those children who we help grow in a different world.”

“We are a stronger network of cooperative work, with new reasons to continue.”

“We learned that we are a network, that we can achieve many things if we are united, learned many tips for the organization, new strategies for reading aloud, group dynamics and how to develop story writing.”

“We learned that we are doing great work as an institution...from now on we feel more capable and have more ideas to continue our LitClub.”

We look forward to doing this conference again in the various regions in which we work in order to deepen institutional knowledge and build a stronger LitWorld community!

A Moment of Serious Joy

Story Summit at Nigeria Reads/YiSHDA

Joyce, Partnership Coordinator in Nigeria with Nigeria Reads/YiSHDA, shared a reflection from a LitClub Mentor training:

During the training/meeting, mentors shared their experiences with everyone and it was really motivating. Mentor Comfort expressed how being a LitClub mentor has helped her do things and speak out for her girls, the way she ordinarily would not do.