This summer I heard about the International Reading Association’s partnership with NASA in which they highlight and promote the International Literacy Day. While reading IRA’s activity kit for the literacy event, cross-curricular projects caught my eye, such challenges can provide a great way for teachers to incorporate reading and writing into their classroom. As a teacher I am always trying to get the most bang out of each minute students spend in the classroom.
The literacy day event is one of those great bang-for-your-buck events. Particularly because it falls in early September, that time of the school year when you are looking to build independent reading and writing stamina. By adding great real-world importance to our daily reading and writing activities, the students put a great emphasis on the learning process and incorporate the lesson that much easily. Any way to highlight reading and writing this early in the year is a win, so I signed my class up for the ILD activity kit.

After accepting the challenge, my first task is to see what resources I can bring to bear for my students. Typically, I reach out my families as well as blog about the upcoming challenge. In order to reach the widest audience, I often tie my blogging into my Facebook and Twitter accounts to spread the word.
For this year’s International Literacy Day this approach worked wonders, a parent in my class responded to inform me that astronaut Paul Lockhart was a personal friend. Of course Mr. Lockhart would be the perfect person to celebrate with if our class could keep up with the challenge for 60 days.

Starting with the finish in mind, I made a semantic map brainstorming possibilities to keep the momentum going during the campaign, including the ILD14 Pinterest page and the IRA activity kit. Then, I examined the resources in my classroom and school that would be good additions. My school makes iPads available, so I decided to gradually release apps promoting authentic reading and writing as well. Free apps like Croak It, Chatter Pix Kids and Pic Collage greatly help.

I searched for authors I could “bring” electronically into the classroom to help foster literacy and found two great authors willing to assist with both writing and reading. Max Kornell and Jennifer Ward provided an ideal environment for my eager learners. Both authors focused on the writing process and highlighted the inspirations for their stories. Max’s session told us the story how he gathers ideas from his family. Jennifer’s session lead us on a virtual tour of her backyard where she told us that she watched animals closely to get ideas for her nonfiction and fiction books. That both authors discussed the difficulties of the writing process and helped all of my students to recognize the writing process is, at times, a difficult process and persevering through the difficulties has merit.

A number of days into the ILD challenge, I am able to recognize the importance of learning which happens outside of my classroom. One example of this organic learning comes from our third grade class (a class buddied with my primer class). During our first buddying experiences we discussed how animals interact in their environment. The students took to the lesson given by their peers and promptly headed to the library to check out books on their animals of interest. Not only did the students come back with a book on their animal they insisted on reading the book in that day’s reading workshop.

I want to encourage any educator to sign up for this challenge. You will simply be amazed at the enthusiasm and engagement that comes with fostering reading and writing skills.

Allison Hogan is a primer teacher at The Episcopal School of Dallas in Texas where she teaches kindergarten and first grade. She holds a bachelors in communications from the University of North Florida and a graduate degree in education from Southern Methodist University where she specialized in reading and English as a Second Language. She has been recognized as a Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development Emerging Leader and a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future. She can be found on Twitter at @AllisonHoganESD or @PrimerESD.