“I love reading because reading I think is really calming,” said Audrey Barborak, Sixth Grade student at Columbiana Middle School.
Barborak and her classmates had a unique opportunity to connect with published authors for World Read Aloud Day. Students in Mrs. Martin’s sixth grade ELA classes video chatted with three authors, and students even had the chance to ask authors questions.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” said Aubrey Hornsby, Sixth Grade student at Columbiana Middle School.
Hornsby is currently reading New Kid by Jerry Craft. She just finished the book Game Changer.
World Read Aloud Day was founded by LitWorld in 2010 as an opportunity for people all around the globe to celebrate the joy of reading aloud and the power of sharing stories. Reading aloud in a classroom allows all students to have a common text to discuss and refer to, creates a class bond, models fluent reading, gives equal access to complex texts for all readers, and helps to promote the joy of reading.
Students in Mrs. Martin’s class documents their life in books. In the hallway outside of her classroom, there are posters hanging revealing what students are reading and what book they just finished reading. Inside her classroom, bright colored Post-Its cover a wall breaking down books by genres. At the end of the year, students add up the amount of pages they read during sixth grade and most students are currently at 3,000 pages or more.
Alyssa Kakavros, Sixth Grade student at CMS, enjoys reading, and has taken note how being a reader helps in other classes.
“Mrs. Capp always says that math is not just math, it’s reading too,” said Kakavros. “You got to pick out the words and you have to help fix the problem.”