Schuylkill Valley Elementary School students celebrated “Read Across America” in a big way with special reading related events planned for the week of March 2. Unfortunately, the weather created some problems with students having three snow-days at the end of the week. One of the bigger parts of the celebration was “Family Reading Night” which was pushed back to Wednesday, March 11.
Close to 200 families filled the elementary school with most of those approximately 600 people wearing their favorite pajamas for the “Reading Under the Stars” themed event.
“This is an amazing turnout for our first night,” said Melissa Kelchner, Schuylkill Valley Elementary School principal. “Thank you all for coming out tonight. I want to first thank the committee for putting this event together.”
Kelchner continued after a loud applause from attendees, “I’d also like to thank our volunteer readers and ask that you do stop in to hear them read.”
Students and their families gathered in the cafeteria to kick off the event which featured not only special readers, but also snacks, Bingo, a scavenger hunt, photo booths and making bookmarks. Two special guests helped start the night before the families spread throughout the school at the various activities much to the delight of the students: Anna and Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen.”
Readers were set up in classrooms throughout the school, which also featured small (paper) fires to fit the theme, ready to share their favorite books with the students.
“The idea originated from Marsha Townsend (fourth grade teacher) and Lori Messner (Reading Specialist),” said Kelchner, on how the event came to be. “We put a committee together complete with staff members and parents, decided on the theme (Reading Under the Stars) and went with it. The committee came up with all of the activities and the event was restructured several times due to the huge response.”
Readers for the evening were Morgan Henn (Schuylkill Valley High School senior and Miss Berks County), Jeremy Crills (Schuylkill Valley Middle School assistant principal), Aaron Smith and Hunter Mountz (Schuylkill Valley High School football players), Cathy Overman (Schuylkill Valley Middle School language arts teacher), Tim Mogford (Schuylkill Valley High School English teacher) and Sgt. Major Terry Werley.
“My favorite part was just the overall feeling of community the event had with the school at the center and all surrounding literacy,” said Kelchner.
With this first “Family Reading Night” in the books with such success, the committee is looking ahead to the next.
“We are looking forward to hosting this event every year and have already started coming up with new ideas to make the next one event better,” said Kelchner.
During school, the students celebrated “Read Across America” with a door decorating contest, daily Dr. Seuss trivia, special dress up days and a book swap. During the week of March 2, each day featured a special Dr. Seuss theme to dress up as.
“I hope you have a great time,” said Kelchner, at the beginning of the night. “Thank you so much for coming out tonight.”
