St. Raphael School celebrates ‘I Love To Read Month’
The month of February is “I Love To Read Month” in schools across the country. It is an entire month dedicated to promoting a love of reading and being read to. There are numerous themes and activities schools across the country use to celebrate the month.
Locally, St. Raphael Catholic School has celebrated “I Love To Read Month” throughout February. They developed contests, challenges and fun weekly activities to promote reading.
As a challenge, the school did a read-a-thon with the goal of reading 1,200 books during the month. The lower grades (PreK-3rd Grade) read actual books and added each to the count while the upper grades (4th Grade-6th Grade) got to count chapters as books for the goal count. There was a large Read-a-thon Update Chart located in the school cafeteria to keep an eye on the progress.
Activities during the month included: Teacher Swap Day where teachers visited a classroom other than their own with a book to read along with a simple project and props to go with the book theme; Big and Little Buddies Poster Day where little buddies brought their favorite books and their big buddies helped them create fun, artistic book covers for them; and Hats Off to Reading Day where everyone wore their favorite hats and big and little buddies read books together.
If the students meet the 1200 book challenge, they will, along with a donut party, get to tape Mrs. Steffl (school principal) to a wall or pillar in the school cafeteria this Friday, March 3 following Friday morning Mass. She, in turn, will read to the students while taped to the wall!
It is always fun to see the creative and innovative ways schools promote the importance of reading during I Love to Read Month!