Reading Ropes and Reading Spirit

We just can't get enough of reading at Horace Mann!  Last week, in particular, we celebrated with a few reading-centric things in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd.

Big thanks to our PTA for running an especially lovely book fair and sponsoring the "special someone" GRANDS breakfast...and to the adults who came to school with the readers in their lives.  We loved Mrs. Morris' reading of Peter Reynolds' Say Something.  If you weren't able to be there, please find a way to check out this VERY special book!



Another favorite part of the week were the dress up days.  The very best of the best was Book Character Day on Friday.  Lots of kids enjoyed coming in costumes...and grown ups did, too.  There are several pictures in our Educator newsletter for March 2019, and here's a photo of 5th grade teacher Mrs. Robinson dressed as The Paper Bag Princess.


Even more lasting than the fun that comes with a Reading Spirit Week are the skills our teachers are helping our kids build each day.  We want to be sure parents know how to help at home, too, since you are your child's first and most important teacher.  One great tool for our early readers is called the Reading Rope.  Students (in first grade in this case), learn that a good story retell includes setting, characters, the problem in the story, a beginning, middle, end and how the problem is solved.  By moving down the rope, kids practice including all the important bits.  It is easy to see how this tool teaches a skill that will be useful in lifelong reading.

Reading Spirit Week was great, and we look forward to our annual One School One Book activity in May.  In the meantime, keep on reading!