A Work in Progress was named the middle school selection for this year’s Global Read Aloud!
To be honest, I’m still finding a bit hard to believe it’s true.
If you know anything about the Global Read Aloud, you can probably understand why that is. If you don’t know anything about the Global Read aloud, you’re probably hoping for an explanation. Well, here you go . . .
The Global Read Aloud was created back in 2010 by the remarkable Pernille Ripp. Every year, she picks a handful of books — each for a different age group. Then, over the course of six weeks in the fall, educators all over the world read that book with their students, all while simultaneously making as many global connections as possible. There are robust, highly active online communities (on a variety of social media platforms) where educators discuss ideas and share student work and — perhaps most amazingly and importantly — make plans to connect. Far-flung classrooms communicate with one another via Zoom, Skype, Twitter, Padlet, Flipgrid, or good old-fashioned letter writing, forging incredibly productive connections, all based around the shared reading and exploration of a single book. In the thirteen years since it’s been around, the Global Read Aloud has reached millions — you read that right: multiple millions — of kids.
I mean, how cool is all of that?!
The creators of the books also often get involved — and I’m already brainstorming ways I can do so — but I feel like that’s just a bonus. The heart of this project, the beautiful, wonderful, profound result, is the global community that is created. The relationships that are formed among educators who would otherwise never meet. The connections that are made among kids, and the ways in which their voices are celebrated and their perspectives are expanded.
To learn more about the Global Read Aloud — especially if you are an educator who wants to get involved! — click HERE.
Thank you (again and again) to Pernille Ripp for selecting this deeply personal, very special book of mine for inclusion in the Global Read Aloud. And to the thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of kids who will be reading my book as part of the project this fall, thank YOU. I’m eager to see what you make of and do with my book, and hope to connect with as many of you as possible.
