Literacy Week: Worth the Work!

One area I need to work on as a Media Specialist is non-research programming.  My first school had never had a teaching librarian before; thus, the bulk of my time went to a) building a culture of library use and b) putting together and developing the information literacy curriculum.  About the time I was ready to start focusing on traditional literacy, I changed schools and started all over again!

Fortunately, my current school informed me the first week I arrived: "We have Literacy Week.  You're in charge!"  Gulp!

The past few months my team and I put the week together, and it was a success, if I say so myself.  In order to share the wealth and make it easier for you, dear reader, to plan such an event (or just use part of what we did), I'm going to have a short series describing the week and the events.

Since we're a K-12 school, we had to develop activities for both divisions, as well as plan some all school activities.  I also made an "executive" decision to define literacy broadly, including technology and information literacy as well as the more traditional reading/writing.  Today, I'll just describe what those activities were; the next three posts will look at them in more detail and supply handouts.

All-School Activities

Read-a-Thon:  This lasted for an entire month.  Students find sponsors who agree to pay either a set amount or a certain amount per book. We found two local schools in need of books, and will donate the money towards that.

Book Buddies:  Secondary students paired up with primary students and shared their favorite picture book.

D.E.A.R:  Drop Everything and Read, 20 minutes per day, with "guest" announcers.

Skype Author Visits:  Laurie Halse Anderson and David Greenberg.  WONDERFUL!!!

Secondary:
Search  Story Contest:  We used the Google Search Story tool and had students create their own stories.

Library Mystery:  This took a lot of planning, and only about 12 students participated, but they had a blast (as did I and the "suspect" teachers), so I count it a big success.


Primary:
StoryBirds:  We used StoryBird to have the students write their own stories.

3D Book Promotion Contest: We wanted to move beyond designing book covers.  That's a picture of one of the entries. 


Since I need to plan another one of these next year, if you have any ideas or successful activities you've used in your own library, add them to the comments!