This site is designed for schools to make and host digital connections for picture books by Yuyi Morales. It is free for anyone interested in joining. However, I ask that for each time you share your work, that you also take time to comment on others. This is my second time designing GRA connections in this manner. I am positive that there will be tweaks to the structure along the way that will help improve the functionality of the platform, so please bare with me. I encourage you to make positive suggestions and also make me aware of any concerns. I can be emailed at crossmanb@lkgeorge.org.
This is my fourth year doing the Global Read Aloud. Each year I get a little more creative and empowered to build a bigger and better experience for learners... hence building a website. I am an elementary librarian and I push-in to classrooms, grades K-3 to bring this experience to our students. It can get overwhelming to establish connections and activities with each school at multiple grade levels. I felt that this website helped to streamline the process last year, and also helped to build a wider range of connections that support more than a few schools.
I once again used Erin Kramer's @ErinLKramer shared lesson plans (thank you Erin for the incredible resources) to help provide suggested lesson ideas for weekly connection activities. You will want to consider following Erin if you don't already (she is amazing.) as a springboard for each week's activities. The lesson plans for each week are posted on its own page. I will indicate which activity we will be doing at our school. You can choose to do the activity we are doing or another one of the activities. I added a table to to the top of each page, for classrooms to indicate which activity they will be doing. This tool may or may not prove to be helpful. It might be useful for some activities (Skype, Google Hangouts, etc), while for others it might not be necessary. Hopefully, it will allow you to connect with several different schools and classes throughout the experience. I encourage you to not limit yourself to only one connection. This site is designed to foster multiple connections from a variety of locations.
A typical week will look like this:
This is only a loose structure. Depending on the activity and schedules this structure will vary per school and classroom.
Thank you Pernille Ripp and all the participating schools for bringing the Global Read Aloud into all our classrooms! I look forward to another amazing year of connecting with readers across the world!
Bridget Crossman
@bcrossm85