August: Program orientation for teachers and best-practice tips for easy implementation.
August/September: Presentation to the class ending with student participation enrollment.
September: Book-bin delivery / Manager training / First book check-out. / Small Group Check-in
October: Coaching Session #1 – How to read aloud effectively by pointing at and talking about pictures. / Small Group Check-in
November: Coaching Session #2 – How to encourage curiosity while reading using “I Wonder” statements. / Small Group Check-in
December: Read For All (RFA) Monterey County Literacy Competition.
January: Book-bins traded to provide students with a new set of books to read. / Small Group Check-in
February: Coaching Session #3 – How to engage the listener by making your voice interesting, using gestures, facial expressions, and voice inflection. Improvement of reader comprehension and presenting skills. / Small Group Check-in
April: Coaching Session #4 – Program review and an end of year student survey. / Small Group Check-in
May: Program ends. Book-bins and Reading Logs are collected and tabulated for awards.
May/June: End-of-year award event. Students are recognized and those meeting the goal of reading 100 days or more are awarded a special medal.
Best Practices for Success
- Support the
project mission to help underserved children achieve kindergarten readiness and
a lifetime of literacy by empowering your students to read regularly to their
young family members at home.
- Attend
program orientation and learn about tips for high implementation.
- For
effective implementation, we ask our teachers to:
- Collect
completed Student Participation forms and give them to your Program Coordinator
- Schedule regular weekly book check-out and return: Monday or minimum day, first thing in the morning usually works best. Add it to lesson and sub plans. If Monday is to be your regular day for checking in/out books and it’s a holiday, be sure book check-out happens Tuesday morning.
- Select and support two responsible, careful and organized students to serve as book-bin managers: This will require leadership skills to conduct weekly book check-outs and returns. The managers don’t need to have a little one at home.
- Allow book-bin managers to initiate scheduled book check-out without needing to ask for permission: Gently remind them the first few times until it becomes a habit. Praise them for remembering. If you forget and they remind you, please allow them to check books in and out ASAP. This will reinforce the importance of the Read to Me Project and keep participating students on track to meet their reading goal.
- Remind students to return their books: When we are able to borrow something, we take good care of it and return it on time.
- Reinforce and recognize students for weekly reading & consistent book return.
- Assist book bin managers with having books returned: When the book bin managers give you a form with names of students who did not return their books, read those names aloud and admonish the students to be sure to bring their books tomorrow. Remind them again at the end of the day.
- Receive any lost book forms from book bin managers. Speak with the student with the lost book, tell the student to look very hard to find the book, give him/her the form to take home, have signed and returned to the teacher. Return the signed forms to the book bin managers.
- Set a tone of importance: The program is important to you, important to the students and important to their families, and your school has financially committed.
- Praise reader and book bin manager’s commitment and dedication throughout the year.
- Respond to program emails and communications in a timely manner.
- Optional – Assign occasional writing prompts or activities to measure reader accountability (Ideas and prompts are available on the website.)
