By: Katherine Rodgers, Katherine Clemens, Katelyn Mielke Google 15% Project By: Katherine Rodgers, Katherine Clemens, Katelyn Mielke

The Realization... Looking back at all of our teaching placements, we saw that students aren’t reading like we did when we were growing up.. Our idea? Let’s change that, one step at a time.

So.. WHY? Reading is powerful. Reading happens all around us, no matter what language it is in. The love for reading a child has can change their whole life for the better. Loving to read is so very important for children because it is the path to so many things they may have not even dreamed about yet.

What did we do about it? We took advantage of the opportunity to create a project that would be familiar to the students and relate to their interests, specifically by “hooking” them into the project and what may lie behind it all... We wanted students to be able to share their own work with others, their love for reading, and their favorite books in order to inspire friends, teachers, and students in other grade levels to want to “dive into books” as we all did together!

How did we do it? We decided to work with the first grade classes at Trace Crossings and met with the teachers and reading coach to choose twelve students to work with. They felt as though these students were ones that could motivate the rest of the school, simply by reading. We then let these 12 students pick their FAVORITE picture book to read and recorded them reading it. By reading their favorite book, we knew that they would read it with excitement, fluency, and passion.

Let’s Get Technical... Although we had a few technical difficulties with the videos, we made it through and worked through it to ensure that they would all work. Our next step in our project was to upload the videos of students reading and create QR codes for each video. Our final step was to put it all together! We printed and laminated the book covers and QR codes AND...

...Our “Read Box” was created! - Many students may learn different skills in reading simply by listening to the way that others pronounce their words and address the audience. It is a fun way to allow students to take the initiative in creating a project of their very own in the classroom with the aid and support of the teacher, and it is such an engaging showcase of their beautiful work for others to listen, learn, and to enjoy!