Literacy Month was a fun-filled month of celebrations in Elementary School during the month of May. The overall theme was ‘Read the World’, and each week students explored a different aspect of Literacy.

• Week one, ‘Books are Windows and Mirrors’: Students spent time exploring how books allow people to see either themselves depicted or learn about people and places that are different from our own lives and experiences.
• Week two, ‘Mother Tongue Reading: Students focused on reading books in their home languages.
• Week three, ‘We are Authors!’: Students shared stories they wrote themselves with their classmates during reading time and we also had a visiting author!
• Week four, ‘I Am a Reader!’: Students celebrated their own reading lives, identified their favorite books, authors, and genres, and dressed up as their favorite character from books!

In addition to the weekly themes, there were tons of activities, such as...

Door Decorating: Students decorated their classroom doors like their favorite book covers and everyone took a tour around the school to guess which book was being depicted. We had so many fun ones like The Lorax, I Spy, The Twits, The Gruffalo, and The Neighbors. Students drew, painted, made 3D paper art, decorated a tree, and even used a plant to creatively design their doors.

Read-a-thon: Students also participated in a read-a-thon and pledged to read a certain amount during the month to help a school in Cambodia.

Guess the Reader: Pictures of teachers hiding behind their favorite books were hung on the first floor and students had fun guessing which teacher was which.

Book Bingo: There was book bingo where students completed different reading activities to win prizes!

Story Chain: The entire Elementary School worked together on a story chain. Each class starting from Pre-K to Grade 5 wrote a paragraph and passed it onto the next class. It was then read aloud and made into a video by one of our teachers.

Book Clubs: Elementary school Principal, Ms. Tatz, and the Elementary librarian, Ms. Jeziorski, also participated in book clubs with parents and students. There were great discussions and connections and we were happy to have parents involved in Literacy Month!

Gift of Reading: Kindergarteners gave the ‘gift of reading’ where they asked teachers around the school what their favorite genre of book was. Then, they went to read to them from books from that genre. Thank you, Kindergarteners for such a lovely gift!

Visiting Author: On week three, visiting author and illustrator Trevor Lai came to AISG to talk to students about the power of imagination. Students participated in writing and drawing workshops and learned about his journey from loving books as a kid to owning his own animation studio and publishing books!

Dress Up As Your Favorite Book Character: The month concluded with an assembly celebrating all the reading and writing our students did over the month. Students and faculty came to the assembly dressed up as their favorite characters from books and it was fun seeing these characters come to life around campus!

Thank you to our librarian, Ms. Jeziorski, for organizing a month of literacy celebration for our students. She said, “Literacy Month highlighted the strong reading culture on the Er Sha campus! Students enjoyed talking about books and sharing stories, and their highlight was getting to meet in person author and animator Trevor Lai!”.