"I love reading."
Settling into a good book . . .
Writing book reviews and voting for your favorite one . . .
Exploring poems that make you laugh, remember, and inspire your own poetry . . .
Thinking like an illustrator . . .
Keeping a writer's notebook . . .
Reading books together and talking about your favorite moments . . .
This is what PARP looks like!
March means PARP—Pick a Reading Partner!
PARP encourages children to relish reading. It’s an annual, month-long celebration full of mystery readers, author visits, book groups, character days, and more, made extra special by school librarians, reading specialists, teachers, administrators, and parents.
This year’s inventive themes are Reading Rocks – Be a Reading Rockstar (IMES); Reading Is Emojinal (MPES) and March Reading Madness (KES).
All schools planned to launch PARP with a visit from John Jay High School drama group. (Because of snow days, some schools will end with this event.) High school students performed skits from favorite children's books including "Henny Penny," "The Night I Followed the Dog," "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," "The Trouble With Cauliflower," and "Where the Wild Things Are."
Author visits inspire children to read . . . and write!
Children also met published authors during PARP. They wrote poems with Ted Scheu—and sang “Now I Know My ZBCz;” talked about writing with Rob Buyea--he also read some of the Mr. Terupt series; and thought like illustrators with Barbara McClintock who shared her new book, “The Five Forms.”
Barbara McClintock at IMES
"When I was a child, I drew all of the time," Barbara McClintock told Increase Miller Elementary students. "I still do."
She took out a pen and began drawing on a flip chart. The children saw a story take shape. What started as a flower in a vase became a flower with eyes and ear buds! Then, a shark and a sailboat appeared and began circling the vase.
Rob Buyea at KES
"Turn your writing switch on," author Rob Buyea told fifth graders at Katonah Elementary School.
"As you go about your life, always be thinking like a writer. How can this be used in a story? What if . . . When your writing switch is turned on, ideas will come to you."
Ted Scheu at MPES
"The rules for poetry are flexible," Ted Scheu told students at Meadow Pond Elementary. "You're in charge! You don't always need capital letters or punctuation."
He shared five things that are awesome about poems, topped by this: Poems make us better writers because we pick our words so carefully.