Read Across America, a Month-long Celebration!

A message from Reading Specialist, Melissa Rossman:

Books are powerful conversation starters and conversations are just how we’ll kick off our Read Across America celebration at FHES! One thing to remember is that good conversations require important and weighty issues to grow big ideas about our world. To that end, every classroom teacher has received one of the following titles: Wishtree, The Day You Begin and Be Kind. Teachers are being encouraged to have whole class conversations around how to make our community stronger and more supportive, our students more likely to listen to one another and, ultimately, to make deeper connections between the lessons great literature has to offer us and our own lives.

Our teachers and students will be discussing the differences among students within our Freedom Hill community and how those differences contribute to a stronger, richer and more welcoming community here at Freedom Hill. By the beginning of March, most students in the school (regardless of which books they have read) will be making a wish to hang on a school wishtree. Teachers will be developing their students’ capacity to make wishes to improve the world around them for a school wishtree. Students hearing Wishtree and The Day you Begin will be thinking about what it means to be apart from their community and to be a part of their community. In these books the students, their classmates and/or members of the town decide working together to support the people in their community is the right thing to do. And, the characters in the stories evolve into the best versions of themselves because of this realization.

It is our hope that our students will learn to be even kinder and more humane in their interactions with their classmates and others as a result of these discussions. You can learn more about FCPS’s Portrait of a Graduate and the Ethical and Global Citizen attribute here: https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/portrait-graduate. This ties in directly with the following Positivity Project traits: love, kindness, social intelligence, hope/optimism, connection/purpose, teamwork/citizenship, perspective, open-mindedness, curiosity, bravery, perseverance and integrity. You can learn more about the Positivity Project here: https://posproject.org/character-strengths/.

Our FHES Read Across America celebration continues with the following events:
•March 4th, author event. FHES welcomes award winning author, Erica Perl! (look for a flyer and order form in Tuesday folders beginning next week)
•March 4th launch of the PTA’s Read-a-Thon· (Read-a-thon runs from 3/4-3/17, flyers to come home on 2/26)
•Completion of our FHES Wishtree (sample wishtree below)

For more information, please feel free to contact Mrs. Rossman, our Reading Specialist, at Melissa.Rossman@fcps.edu