Read Across America Day....

I wanted to share our wonderful day of celebrating reading -- Read Across America day.  At Upham, we celebrated on Wednesday, March 7.

Our top two readers from the February reading challenge, Kayla and Lily H. (both from 4O) helped me with the Read Across America assembly.  To kick off our day, we announced the February break reading challenge results.

Next up-- reader's theater!  Upham teachers and staff performed our rendition of The Day the Crayons quit by Drew Daywalt.  Students had been asked to dress in their favorite color to tie in with our crayon book.

Thank you to the fourteen teachers and staff who participated or helped with the set!

Following our reader's theater, I showed a slideshow I had created featuring Upham students and staff reading.  This year I made sure *every* Upham student was featured in the slideshow!

Mr. Ito, principal from the Wellesley Middle School, graciously continued his tradition of visiting the fifth grade.  He spent time answering students' questions about middle school (and there were A LOT of them!) followed by a read-aloud of the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce.

Classrooms also participated in a school-wide DEAR (drop everything and read!).  Additionally, I provided each classroom teacher with 1-2 picture books to read aloud to their class.

It was another successful Read Across America day at Upham!

All about UpCott!

You may have heard from your child about our "UpCott" lessons in library -- that's Upham's version of a Caldecott award (more about the Caldecott award here: http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecottmedal).  For weeks, students from all grades listened to picture books that might win the "real" Caldecott award.

Here are the nominations I chose (in no particular order):

All the way to Havana

Mighty Moby

A Perfect Day

After the Fall

The Antlered Ship

Jabari Jumps

The book of mistakes

Windows

Wolf in the snow

Every grade voted... aaaaannnnnndddddd the winner is.......  After the fall by Dan Santat

Sadly, Upham's choice got no Caldecott-love, not even an honor.  The Caldecott winner was Wolf in the snow.  Each class learned about all of the youth media award winners (in addition to the Caldecott) and took time to discuss whether Wolf in the snow deserved the medal.  Results were mixed!

Related to UpCott, our third graders had the opportunity to design our UpCott medal (that will be affixed to the cover of our UpCott winner).  First grade and fourth grade voted and the winner was Caroline S.'s design from 3W:

Congratulations, Caroline!

If you're interested in exploring which books won a youth media award, visit: http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2018/02/american-library-association-announces-2018-youth-media-award-winners

They did it again!

Upham students did it!  Prior to the February break, students were challenged to read 42,840* minutes over break.  After tallying up all of those reading logs, we found that students had read for a total of 52,479 minutes over break!

First, I want to recognize our class with the highest participation percentage-- 4G!  100% of students turned in their reading logs in 4G!  They have earned extra recess time.  Coming in second was 5E with 85% turning in reading logs.

I also want to recognize our top readers-- first, by class:

#1 was 4O with 8389 minutes!!! (4O has also earned extra recess time!)

#2 was 4G with 6464 minutes

#3 was 3GH with 5947 minutes

(this is the same top three from the winter reading challenge!)

And our top readers by student:

#1 Kayla from 4O with 2219 minutes!

#2 Lily from 4O with 2045 minutes

#3 Sofia N. from 1H with 1840 minutes

#4 Allie from 3GH with 1299 minutes

For hitting their goal, Upham students have earned a school-wide Freaky Friday on Friday, March 16th.  Freaky Friday is similar to last year's "Wacky Wednesday" (mismatched/inside-out/backwards clothing, crazy hair, etc.).

Great job to students (and parents who helped keep track of those logs!) -- as always, I was so impressed with their reading.

*if you're wondering how I calculate the minute challenge, I ask each of the 238 students to read 20 minutes a day over 9 days of break