The more you read the more you’ll know

Clarke Elementary students are celebrating Read Across America Day and Dr. Seuss’ birthday Tuesday. The celebrations are not just one day though, the school is doing fun things all week long for students to encourage reading.

Each day of the week they are having dress up days and teachers are reading Dr. Seuss books every day. School lunch is going along with the theme, the school lunch menu reads “1 fish 2 fish, Skipper Zipper Smiles, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day and Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You” as the meal for Tuesday.

Classrooms are having extra reading time and the kindergarten and first grade have had a Pippy the Pig book donated by Iowa author Lori J. Ferris to each child.

At Murray Elementary the festivities begin nearly a month in advance. Starting on February 16 Murray Elementary students have been involved in a class against class reading contest.

For the contest each child is sent home with a reading log and any out-of-school reading that they do will be logged. Class totals are tallied up each week with kindergarten against first grade, second against third and fourth against fifth. Pre school even gets in on the fun with logs sent home for parents to count the minutes they’ve spent reading to their child. Staff members are paired up with rooms and their reading minutes go toward the various classrooms as well. As of Tuesday the school’s total was 64,000 minutes read.

After a month the totals will be gathered and at a school ceremony the student with the most minutes read from each class will be announces and given a medal. The winning classes have Reading Rocks, painted rocks that sit in their classroom all year until they are passed on to the next winner.

Classrooms are participating in door decorating and dress up days this week and on Dr. Seuss’ birthday, Tuesday, the students get to have a party with cupcakes and juice.

While usually only minutes reading outside of school can be counted on the reading logs, random Drop Everything And Read times have been announced over the loud speaker and students in every class are able to take 10 minutes to read and add it to their logs.

This special week is celebrated in schools across the country to encourage a love of reading in young students. Clarke and Murray Elementary Schools are working hard to cultivate spaces, times and a fun atmosphere for their students to discover the joys of reading.