The Brown Bag Teacher

Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World.

A Class Read-In! Celebrating Success

Each week, my friends work to earn stars for their at-home reading. For every 20 minutes they read, students earn a star. If we earn 100 stars collectively then we celebrate! You can read more about our routine and grab the materials to collect your own stars here. 
Two weeks before Winter Break, our class earned 109 stars in ONE week! That’s 2,180 minutes of reading in a single week. 🙂 As a class, we voted to have a class read-in the following week. 
So, cue the fake fire, we spent an entire morning reading our favorite books! From guest readers to blankets to Mo Williams – it was a fabulous morning. 

My friends brought in blankets and stuffed friends (that fit in their backpacks). We even extended our reward and went shoeless in the classroom (ooooooooh). 😉 We started the morning reading from our bookbins with a partner. 

For our special reading day, I set out ALL of our Mo Williams books. They definitely got a workout. I love hearing the expression with which my friends read these books – it’s amazing! 

As part of our morning, we also took time to organize our classroom library. Students chose a partner and grabbed a bin. They checked that each book was in the right bin, the books were facing the right way, and the books were organized small to large. I love having students in charge of ‘fixing’ our library. It means they take better care of it, they see more of the books we have in our library, and my friends see it as ‘their’ library!

They worked hard, and it looks SO much better!

Throughout the morning, we alternated between partner reading, read-to-self, listening to reading, and guest readers. We were blessed with several amazing readers and were introduced to some amazing books! Our principal visited us for a little while reading, “Santa’s Book of Names” and we felt like celebrities. 🙂

We snuck in some moments to listen to our favorite stories read online. Brave Irene
was our choice for the day read by Al Gore on Storyline Online – a fantastic, free database of online stories!

My 1st graders are now ‘readers’ and our December Read-In was the perfect was to celebrate and reflect on how much they have grown as readers. It’s really amazing to think back to August and consider where we started. I am constantly amazing by their growth. They.Are.Awesome.

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