10YO: Turning Pages & Building Empathy

Students in the 10YO class have an amazing Literacy/reading program.  Here are some highlights of our program.

1. Book Clubs:  Students choose one of four books to read with an accompanying teacher and discuss topics of characters, themes, plot, and connections.  We recently completed our first session with the theme of "Empathy", and this week we began our second session with the books Rain, Reign, The Monkey King, The Cow-Tail Slip, and The Boy on the Porch. 

2. Independent Reading:  Each of our classrooms is equipped with an incredible library of 200 age-appropriate fiction and non-fiction books, not to mention a plethora of library books that are linked to them.  Students are building their own personal "towers" to visually show the reading they have been doing.  We are also having a friendly competition between classes to see which class is ahead of the other!

3. Read Aloud:  Twice a week, Mr. Breen or Ms. Dickinson engages students' listening skills by reading a book out loud to the whole class.  Currently, they are listening to City of Ember, a suspenseful dystopian novel about a city existing underground for hundreds of years!