It’s Time to Plan World Read Aloud Week 2018

It’s time for us all to start making plans and building excitement for World Read Aloud Day 2018 with Litworld. This year, World Read Aloud Day takes place on February 1, 2018, but many of us will celebrate the entire week of January 29-February 2, 2018.

World Read Aloud Day “calls global attention to the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories.” When we connect our students through Skype, Google Hangouts, or other web tools, they experience the power of the read aloud and realize that they are connected with a bigger world that is both the same and different from them. By connecting our voices through reading aloud, we are reading on behalf of the 758 million people who cannot read.

Shannon McClintock Miller, Matthew Winner, and I invite you to start posting your schedules on our shared Google Doc.

World Read Aloud Day 2018 Planning Document

This year, we’ve tried to organize the document by time zones to make it easier to find connections that work for you. If you don’t see your time zone listed, please add it as a heading.

When you share your schedule, be sure to include:

Your name
Your contact info such as social media, Skype, and/or email
Your role
Your school and grade levels
Your location
List your time zone when posting your available dates and times

After you post your own schedule, take a look at the other schedules and sign up on someone’s schedule to connect your students. We’ve found that it doesn’t matter if same grade levels connect with one another. Often times, an older grade can read aloud to a younger grade or younger grades can find parts of a books that they can read aloud to an older grade. There’s not just one way to connect. Part of the fun is meeting new friends, planning your read alouds, and seeing what magical things happen during your connection that you weren’t even expecting.

We have many ideas from previous years on our blogs. You can read more about previous World Read Aloud Day connections on Expect the Miraculous and The Library Voice. Litworld also has several resources for you to use in your planning and connections including: