Mary Alice Osborne: See My Libraries

Mary Alice Osborne: See My Libraries - - - page 8 of 12

This area is called Read Around the World and houses books about young people in many different cultures all over the world. For the Middle School Book Bowl last year I chose 11 books from this area for the teams to read. I feel that it is extremely important for our students to learn about how other people live, especially those who are not as fortunate as we are, so that they may gain empathy, understanding and perspective.	After the student teams have read the books, they compete to answer questions about the themes, characters, and ideas in the books.	One team intently discussing their answer.
During Book Week in March, our theme at the Elementary School was The Reading Olympics. Classes participated in 10 different reading activities to win a gold medal in the Decathlon of Reading.	We had great participation and enthusiasm by all the classes in the grades PreK-5. Students dressed as characters from their favorite books at the opening assembly.		I was fortunate to be able to arrange for Chinese Olympic figure skater Chen Lu to help us begin our Reading Olympics.