Forever in the Middle: The Global Read Aloud

The past two years in the Fall, I've participated in an awesome learning experience and global collaboration opportunity:  The Global Read Aloud. If you have visited my classroom during this month, chances are you saw this in action.

The Global Read Aloud is organized by ELA guru Pernille Ripp with the idea that students around the world are read aloud one common book. The goal is to promote reading for enjoyment and collaboration between students. It sounds pretty amazing, right?  It completely is!

Here is some basic information about the Global Read Aloud.

Book selection
The Global Read Aloud book selection begins months (maybe even a year?) before the Read Aloud begins. Books are selected for four age groups: picture books, early readers, late elementary, middle school, and high school. Once the books are selected, teachers can register for the Global areas Aloud, which helps the organization keep track of where schools are participating from. The GRA began in 2010 with 150 students and now has over 1 million students participating worldwide. The organization does not provide books or materials for the teachers.

This year, the books selected for each group were
Picture Book Study

 

 














Early Readers                     Late elementary           
              



Middle School                         High School  
             


This year my classes are reading The Bridge Home and it has brought up great questions about many relevant and heavy worldwide issues such as homelessness, gender equality, child labor, and even spousal/child abuse.

Types of collaboration
The easiest way to start working with other GRA teachers is the join the Facebook group. From there, teachers can start sharing ideas and make plans for collaboration. We have used Padlet, Flipgrid, "snail mail" postcards, GoogleHangouts, and Twitter slow chat to collaborate with our partner classes. Some platforms are easier than others of course and it is up to the teachers to decide what works best for them and how many connections they wish to make. I try to have my students collaborate at least once a week with another class.

Student feedback
I added a question to a quick quiz on the last few chapters of reading to get student input on their experience. Student input is often the most valuable of all. These are some of their responses:

• "I think it's cool because we get to communicate with other people about the book."
• "Getting to talk to people across the country and around the world is interesting because we see how they think."
• "It's nice to know so many schools in the world are reading the same book as us. It's also a great way to discover books."
• "It's just one giant book club and it expands my thinking."

I love each and every unit during the school year for different reasons, but the GRA is definitely a highlight of my Fall semester. The students, even at this age, love being read to and a bonus is that they are reading great literature and looking forward to talking about it.

For more information about the GRA, please see the FAQ page or comment below with your questions.

Keep the magic alive,













Kandyce Valverde