Students from the Upper Elementary School spent an hour reading to kindergartners from the Dayton-Deans School last week as part of Read Across American, an annual celebration of Dr. Suess’ birthday.
By: Amanda Bok
Dayton-Deans kindergartner Elizabeth Ajose was enthralled.
She leaned her head on sixth-grader Josh Cohen’s shoulder. She was cheerful but quiet, engrossed in his words. Her eyes glimmered.
Josh was reading to her from "Wacky Wednesday," by Theo LeSieg, using different voices and drawing her attention to the pictures.
He was one of the sixth-graders from the Upper Elementary School who spent an hour with kindergartners from Dayton-Deans School on Friday morning to read from their favorite books.
Sixth-graders from Nicole Lemaster, Jennifer Weed and Rebecca Unruh’s classes participated in the activity as part of the Read Across America program, a nationwide celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday which encourages children to read more.
This was one of many reading activities Dayton-Deans had planned for the culmination of Read Across America on Friday.
Other activities included a school assembly where students from Debbie Rosenblum’s fourth-grade class dressed as different book characters and presented the school’s reading results to their peers.
The school’s reading program had taken the theme "the places you’ll go" and became a symbolic journey. For every 30 minutes students spent reading, they traveled one mile, figuratively, across the nation.
After a month, the school had accumulated 10,098 miles and charted a course north to Massachusetts, west to Ohio, Wyoming and Washington, south to California, east to North Carolina, among other places, and then back home. Along the way they visited book characters from different cities, like the animals from "Charlotte’s Web" in Lancaster, Pa.
Friday morning, dressed in costumes of different characters, like Ramona, from the series of the same name, or The Cat in the Hat, students from Ms. Rosenblum’s fourth-grade class revealed to their peers just how far the school had "traveled."
"We did it, we did it," said a student dressed as the Cat in the Hat.
Moments earlier he had bobbed through the side-door of the gym, jumped up and down for a few minutes, and waved his hands to catch the students’ attention. Then he ran unto the stage.
The gym flooded with cheers.
The Cat asked, "10,617 miles, what do you think of that?
"We have traveled by reading really fast. We reached our goal, for the whole school. Dayton-Deans’ reading rally was really cool!"
Another student, dressed as Ramona, encouraged students to continue reading.
"Ramona, Beezus and Howie are here to say, you went all around the country far and away," she said. "There are many great books for you to read, never stop reading, it’s something you need."
Both the assembly and the quieter morning activity were a success, teachers said.
"It’s excellent reinforcement for life-long reading," said Vice Principal Melissa Sadin of the morning activities.
Sixth-graders too, said they enjoyed the morning program.
"It’s fun to read to kids because they always have different reactions," said sixth-grader Pranita Mehta.
"Reading to kids gives them more imagination," said sixth-grader Frankie Johnson. "It helps them read better and gets them more interested in stuff."