WRAD 2023 is officially a Wrap!
World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) is a special literacy event that takes place around the globe on the first Wednesday in February each year. It's hosted by LitWorld, and originally founded by Pam Allyn. For the past several years, author Kate Messner creates a space on her website where teachers and librarians can connect with authors and illustrators who are willing to volunteer to offer free virtual book readings to children around the world. It's one of my favorite book-related events to participate in.
For the past couple of years, I've used a Sign-Up Genius to help me coordinate my virtual visits. I also now have a Google Form for folks who want to be among the first to find out when the scheduling tool is available for next year.
This year I scheduled visits with ten schools, and successfully completed visits with eight schools. Even with excellent coordination, it's not unusual that one or more of the schools needs to cancel at the last minute due to weather-related school closures or some other scheduling or technical snafu. Also, some schools that hope to meet with me are unable to match their scheduling needs with my available times, and/or my schedule is full by the time they reach out, or there are members of the learning community who were absent on World Read Aloud Day.
For these schools (and now for you!) I compile some of my best resources as a stand-in for a real-time virtual author visit. These resources are of course not quite the same as real-time virtual visit, (or a full-length, personalized author visit), but they do allow young readers to connect with an author in some fashion, in honor of World Read Aloud Day. Please feel welcome to explore and share these resources with your learning community:
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Here is a link to a “Hello” slide deck that I shared with the schools/classrooms that I visited.
It’s not the same as a real virtual visit, but it will allow your students to connect with me for World Read Aloud Day in some fashion. (The “speaker notes” below each slide provide my general talking points and related resource links.)
Speaking of resources, here is the link to the plethora of Resources tab on my website.
From this landing page, you can access things like:
1. My YouTube channel with full readings of several of my books including Lucy’s Blooms, Where Does a Cowgirl Go Potty? and First Day Jitters from the collection of stories in Oregon Reads Aloud. This is where you will also find animated book trailers and companion songs for my three most recent books, as well as some ASL interpreted readings for Lucy’s Blooms and the companion song.
2. Curriculum-Aligned Educators’ Guides for Lucy’s Blooms, Where Does a Cowgirl Go Potty?, and Where Does a Pirate Go Potty? (All three of the guides include STEM tie-ins, and for my Pirate and Cowgirl books, these guides include Readers' Theatre scripts.)
3. Lesson Plans for Sign Language Story Times, themed enrichment activities, and fun extras such as Pirate and Cowgirl Name Generators.
I also have a couple of different “virtual-virtual,” or “self-guided” author visits via Google Slides that you/your students can peruse (the “speaker notes” below each slide provides the talking points I would typically deliver during a school visit):
Write On! Why Writing is (Possibly) the Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Do
From "Ahoy, Matey! to “Howdy, Pardner!” How to Create Vivid Characters by Giving Each a Unique Voice
Please reach out to me directly and I would be more than happy to provide links to these virtual visits.
Once a school or classroom has interacted with one of my books, (via the video story times, and/or virtual workshops on Google Slides on your own), I would be more than happy to respond to written questions from students. How this typically works is that the librarian or classroom teacher assigns a “post visit” writing lesson for the students where they each ask me a question (about my books, or my writing process, or my “office assistant, Pickle, etc.), and then you would deliver the full set of questions to me via postal mail or email (in one batched email from you vs. individual emails from students). After I receive the questions, I will reply to the students with a compilation response that I will deliver to you. Here is a link to some examples of my responses from my interactions with other schools.
I hope these options are helpful resources. Please feel welcome and encouraged to share them with your families and your colleagues, and please let me know if I can be a resource to you in any other way.
Warm wishes,
Dawn
Reach out via email, Twitter, or through my contact form (at the left of this post on the desktop version), if you'd like to schedule a time for me to meet with your students in the future!
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