Teacher stories poured in during and after the completion of the International Literacy Day 60-for-60 Mission. Some of these educators said they would continue their activities through the rest of the school year and we wanted to share their feedback with other teachers. You can continue to download the mission activities and try them out in 2015. Hear how they did it.

I am so glad my school decided to take part in this initiative. I work in several alternative school facilities where the majority of my students receive only two hours of instruction daily. I used to get so discouraged when my students showed a lack of interest in being read to, they would literally ask me not to read. After making them aware of the program and showing them the video you all sent, along with a few Leland Melvin videos, the children did not want me to just stop reading after 60 seconds. They asked for more until we eventually extended our reading time to about 10 minutes every morning and, even then, they sometimes asked me not to stop. I found that when we did our morning positive affirmations after reading, as we had done every morning, they were much more lively and cheerful as we recited them. I believe this is partly because the books I chose to read to them were books of empowerment, books encouraging positive thinking and showing kindness and compassion to others. Even though the 60 days are over, we will continue our story time in the mornings. Thank you for sharing your excitement for literacy with us.—Lakisha Newman, Day Treatment Alternative Program, Virginia

It was a delightful experience, indeed, to conduct the 60-second activity. The children of my class started off with a sentence prompt for story writing. The activity gave me insight into the creative potential of the class. The 60-second activity helped enhance the thinking skills of the students and I could measure the enthusiasm of the children by the fact most of them used to organize their thoughts and were ready to write. Children thoroughly enjoyed this time. —Kavitha Sanjeev, Oakridge International School, India

I would like to share my experience of spending 60 seconds for 60 days on improving the literacy skills of my grade 4 students. As a grade we decided to encourage students to write a story. Students were enthusiastic about that moment every day to continue the story. They preferred genres of their choice to express themselves. At the end of the program, we picked few samples and displayed it on the soft boards to encourage them.—Prashobha Prabhakaran, Oakridge International School, India

My grade 5 class participated in the ILD 60-for-60 Mission and I am really amazed to see the results. The students not only showed their writing skills but also displayed high levels of thinking. I never thought a 60 second activity can benefit them so much. For 60 days, my students waited eagerly every morning when I would ask them to do the 60 second of writing. It brought a lot of discipline. At the end of 60 days they all shared their stories with each other. I would like to take this forward by allowing my students to go ahead and try their hands at creative writing—60 seconds per day. Now I truly believe that a small investment in time can bring great results!
My class also tried guessing NASA Image of the day once a week. It was great to see them make connections with their prior knowledge. It was a class activity.—Anushree Arora, Oakridge International School, India

My students have been finding a word on their own and learning the meaning every day. They take turns with it and share the meaning in the class every morning. The rest of the class jots down them down and each and every person tries to use the word as much as possible the entire day in their casual conversations. This has helped them to improve their vocabulary and they simply love using the new word in the class.—Pratik Siddharth Thapa, Oakridge International School, India

My grade 5 students participated in the ILD mission (Done in 60 Seconds) and enjoyed it immensely. They showed excellent thinking skills and I was amazed when I read their stories. We started this activity in September and every day in the morning we had a classroom routine of writing for 60 seconds. This also led to the development of self-management skills. At the end of 60 days, they all shared their stories with each other. I would like to encourage my students to continue with their creative writing.—Bhavani Akundi, Oakridge International School, India

Student teacher candidates in my Learning and Teaching in Diverse Environments classes joined in ILD by reading to students for 60 seconds that day.  We continued to read for 60 seconds for 60 days and writing Interdisciplinary Thematic Units about literacy in all content areas. The students were asked to find a fiction and nonfiction (informational text) to read to their students with each lesson. We wrapped up our involvement by using technology (iPads) and QR readers in our class. The campaign “60 seconds for 60 days” was a big hit. We plan to continue into the next semester and follow the happenings on the International Space Station with our astronaut Kjell Lindgren in 2015.—Bonnie Cummings, University of Memphis College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, Tennessee

Our activities included extra minutes of read aloud time, reading and reciting poetry, giving book talks, writing “Fortunately, Unfortunately” stories, and sharing favorite quotations.—Debbie Eberly, Smoky Row Elementary School, Indiana

I did the challenge with my fifth-grade resource language arts class. We wrote for 60 seconds for 60 days. They enjoyed doing this and reminded me when we were out or had missed a class. After the 60 days were completed, they had the opportunity to share their story with the class.—Lisa Weilacher, Sheridan Intermediate School, Arkansas

(In the first grade) we fired up our engines—we accepted the challenge you placed before us. We kept track of our reading and the word count of books read in class (during the extra reading minutes we added to our reading block). We blasted off and our grand reading total is 544,791 words/933 books. We were thrilled to find we were over a half a million words. The students have now challenged themselves to continue (what you started) and they want to reach 1,000,000! What can I say? My 20 students stayed on track and gave a great effort.—Patricia Whitakes, Philadelphia Elementary School, Mississippi

My fifth-grade class completed their 60 Day Story, and they were all eager and enthusiastic during the process. The next step is editing, and creation of a published book through Studentreasures Publishing. It was an exciting time, and the students looked forward to completing their exercise daily.—Sherry Forbes, International Community School, Georgia

Our third-grade class chose to do the 60-Day Story activity. We started each day by working on our 60-seconds-for-60-days story. We had a different leader each day who passed out our stories, ran the timer, then picked up the stories. We began keeping a 60-for-60 Log Sept. 8 and just finished our 60th day Dec. 8.
Some student comments:
“It was awesome and I really had fun with it. It helped me write better. Thank you!”
“Thank you for the 60-second writing. I love it. It could be another way I could have fun when I'm bored.”
“It was super fun. I became better at writing and I want to do it again, please.”
Our students looked forward to their special minute of writing. Since it was such a short time period, the students stayed highly focused. —Jennifer Spencer, Mt. Nebo Elementary School, West Virginia

April Hall is editor of Reading Today Online. She can be reached at ahall@/