Read Across OKCPS

Read Across OKCPS is March 7, 2025. We are excited to invite volunteers and community members into our schools to enjoy a day of reading with our OKCPS students.

Find more activities on fun ways to celebrate literacy with us!

Celebrate Literacy

Read Across OKCPS is about celebrating literacy with our students and cultivating a love of reading across our district for all ages. On this page you will find a variety of resources that can support literacy engagement in your classroom, plan your Read Across OKCPS day with learning activities that are meaningful and exciting to you and your students.

Book Scavenger Hunt

A Book Scavenger Hunt is a great way to expose your students to different books and get them excited about reading something new. A book scavenger hunt can occur in two different ways:

While reading a new book aloud or independently, students look for the items on their scavenger hunt list that you have provided. For younger students, provide pictures of the items in the scavenger hunt.
Provide a list of items to search for a variety of new books, students look through the new books or read through the book synopsis to find the items on the Scavenger Hunt List. This method allows your students to sample new books that they may not be familiar with.

Some examples of items to put on the Scavenger Hunt List:

Find a book about an animal
Find a book about spring
Find a book about friendship or featuring someone helping someone else
Find a book with picture of a sun
Find a book that will make you laugh
Find a book with a picture of a bug
Find a book about a superhero

Book Talks

A book talk is a short presentation of a book with the goal of convincing other people to read it. Students and teachers can give Book Talks to share with the rest of the class about a book that they love and why the rest of the class should read it. Utilizing this method helps students to practice their oral language, vocabulary, and presentation skills.

Your class can also gear their Book Talks towards having each student talk about their favorite character and why they relate to them. For younger students have them act out their favorite character and the role they played in the book they read. Older students can share about their connection to the character and what they learned from their actions in the book they read.

Guest Readers

Invite a guest reader to your class. Allow the guest reader to talk about who they are, what they do, and what they love about reading.

Book Tasting

A Book Tasting is a great way to get students interested in a new book. During a Book Tasting, students have the opportunity to sample a book, a "taste" for the book. Click the link to find out more about how to set up a Book Tasting for your students.

Bookmarks

Interested in getting creative during your celebration of literacy have a bookmark decorating competition. Challenge each student to decorate a bookmark based on their favorite book, the book they are currently reading, or their favorite character. Donate the bookmarks to the school library to get other students interested in the book.

Developing Oral Language

Story in a Bag

This activity works for all age-levels! First, get three paper bags or baskets. Then, label each with the following: characters, setting, plot and place several different options for each category in the bag or basket. Have each student retrieve an option from each category and then challenge the students to write or dramatize a story based on the selected characters, setting, and plot. This activity can be done individually, in pairs, or in groups.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool. For students who are still learning how to read it provides them an outlet to share and demonstrate their understanding of story structure. These support pre-reading or early reading and writing skills. For younger children it is fun to have them build their own puppets or puppet like tools to share their stories. It is also an opportunity to celebrate cultures with a rich storytelling tradition and is another way to invite the community into your classroom.

Playing with Letters and Sounds

Playing with letters, sounds, and words helps early learners to build their knowledge base and their love of literacy!

- Use Bananagrams, bottle caps with letters written on them, magnetic letters to identify letters and sounds or to make words
- We are in our Literacy Era so make the friendship bracelets! All you need is fishing line or pipe cleaners and letter beads.
- You have been on a Bear Hunt with your students now let's go on a letter/word hunt. Place letters or words on pieces of paper (sticky notes) and place them all over the room or building. Give each student a clipboard and piece of paper and have them write each letter and or sound they find. You could also hide letters or words in a sensory bin and your students can go on a dig to find them, then have them write down all the letters/words they were able to find.

- Play games - Scrabble, Scattergories, or Mad Libs
- Use a variety of materials to make and create letters such as playdough or in shaving cream
- Create a hopscotch pattern on the floor inside or outside the school, in each square add a letter or a word. As student complete the hopscotch physically, they also say each letter/word.
- Have an old or donated Lego or Duplo set, add letters and words to have your students build words. Then have them write down the words they made.
- Create your playing cards that have sight words or letters on them. Your students can play basic matching games or Go Fish.
- Set up a Bingo Card with letters or words. Make sure to have a fun prize!
- Do a class or school word search! Use butcher paper to write out letters and tape to the wall, don't forget to post the word list, students can find words and mark them off. Words used can include heart words or vocabulary words.
- Use yoga to play with the alphabet! Have students create each letter by making the shape with their body.
- Put together an old puzzle, flip it over, and write letters on the blank side. Then, break it apart and have students put it together to make words, they can even check the work by flipping over and looking at the picture.

READ!
READ!
READ!

The Change Up

Make Read Across OKCPS special by changing up what reading time looks like at your school or in your classroom. You could pick a theme and decorate to fit that theme, for example: camping. The gym could be turned into campgrounds with sleeping bags and tents. Students use flashlights to read their books under the stars.

Read A Thon

How many books, words, pages can we read in a day? Have students commit to a Read A Thon and spend the whole day seeing who can read the most! Don't forget to track just how much you read on March 8th.

Blind Dates

Displayed wrapped books in your classroom or library with only one word to describe the book or genre. Students then pick based on that word. It is truly a blind date with a book! Students will be surprised to find out which book they picked, plus it is a great way to open up a student to new genres.

Book Spine Poetry

Take your class on a walk through the library and tell them they can only pick three to four books, then with the words on the spine of the book they must create their own poetry!

Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure books are a great way to engage students into the book. In these books a character comes up to a problem or circumstance and the class has to decide what the character will do next!

First Chapter Experience

First Chapter Experiences are a sneak-peek of a novel to entice your students to want to read the rest of the book. The teacher or the student reads aloud just the first chapter of a book. The goal is to get students so intrigued by the first chapter, that they want to read more! Some great examples include: Restart by Gordon Korman, Ghost by Jason Reynolds, The Thing about Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, or Wonder by R. J. Palacio.

Reading Response Questions

Have a list of questions ready to go to facilitate conversation around books and literacy time. Check out ideas in the Read Across OKCPS Literacy Activities Folder.

Extension Activities

Create an illustration for the story that shows an understanding of the main character's traits.
Write a dialogue (conversation) between two characters that shows them being silly.
Assign the main character a trait they didn't have. How would this have changed the story?
Write about a time when you exhibited the sam ebehavior using a trait you have in common with the character.