World Read Aloud Day: Be a Friend by Salina Yoon

Today was World Read Aloud Day! People across the world celebrated reading by spending a little extra time reading aloud in a multitude of ways. Check out #worldreadaloudday to see different events around the world.

We decided to kick it off at our school the day before. I chose a great new book, Be a Friend by Salina Yoon, which has an inspirational message on being a good friend that all of our students would enjoy from Kindergarten to fifth grade.

Another reason I chose it for our read aloud was because it also provided for a simple, yet beautiful, storyline a couple students could act out! One of our talented fifth grade actresses played the part of Dennis by dressing up in a black and white striped shirt, a foam heart with safety pin, plastic black hat provided by our music teacher, and tied it all together by drawing the mime's triangles above and below her eyes with black eyeliner.

Another fifth grader joined "Dennis" to play the part of Joy. We talked about how the red lines in the pictures showed the actions that they would do to act out the story.

They practiced for less than five minutes before "showtime" together and preformed in front of the whole school! The girls did an amazing job and the entire student body loved their presentation. Watch the whole read aloud preformance below and also learn how we used "jazz hands" to applaude at the end. Enjoy!