Read Across America Ideas: Celebrating a Nation of Diverse Readers

March 2nd is Read Across America Day. In the past, most libraries and schools celebrated this day by reading Dr. Seuss books and organizing Seuss-themed activities. Over the past couple of years, the focus has shifted to emphasize multicultural and diverse literature. I am grateful for this change because it provides the perfect opportunity to share with students and parents a broader selection of children’s books and to create programs and activities that focus on acceptance, kindness, and cultural diversity.

In this blog post, I want to share with you some different activities and ideas that you can use in your own schools and libraries that go along with this new focus. These are perfect for Read Across America Day or any time you want to have a reading celebration.

1. Author Studies

Choose an author who writes more diverse books or who features multicultural characters. Create a bulletin board display with the author’s name, a few biographical facts, and the book covers of some of his or her books.

Below are a few authors that I recommend.

• Ezra Jack Keats
• Patricia Polacco
• Tomie de Paolo
• Matt de la Pena
• Jacqueline Woodson
• Peter Reynolds
• Allen Say

It doesn’t have to be hard. Often, just a photograph of the author is enough to intrigue students to learn more. Most authors have a website where you can quickly and easily find some background information about them.

Take it a step further and during January or February, let your older elementary students practice their research skills. In groups, they can research an author from a provided list and create a small wall or stand-up display that you can then use for Read Across America week.

2. Get Everyone Involved

Ask staff, parents, and students to share a favorite book from their culture or country. Participants can share why they like the book, what it means to them, and even a picture. Once you have some titles you can use them in many different ways.

• Create an interactive Book Recommendations wall. Encourage students to browse the recommended books. Have a place where people can add recommendations to the wall all year long.
• Post a world map on the wall. Print off a small version of the book cover to hang around the edge. Then using a piece of yarn or string connect that book cover with a push pin on the map.
• Have a “Where in the World?” corner. Use pictures of yourself reading books from around the world. Encourage students to read the same book to find out where you are!

3. Hold a Culture Fair

Organize a school-wide culture fair. This idea will obviously take a lot of planning and preparation but you don’t have to do all the work yourself. Assign each class a country or culture to represent during the culture fair.

Provide teachers with some basic guidelines or use the library class time to prepare in the preceding months. Make sure students research the basics about each country/culture: geography, customs, food, holidays, art, and sports. Then once they have finished their research, students would create some kind of visual presentation that can be put on display.

You can expand on this idea by inviting parents or community members to come in and talk about their culture. Including a tasting of different foods from the cultures or a performance of cultural songs and dances is a great way to connect the cultures to the senses. You could even have a fashion show or an art show. If you want to read more about hosting a culture fair at your school check out this school’s event for tips and ideas.

4. Reading Theme or Spirit Days

Spirit days are so much fun and you can still do them even if you are not doing Dr. Seuss themed activities!

Here are a few theme day ideas that would make for a fun week of reading!

• Reading is an Adventure
• Read Around the World
• Universe of Stories
• One World, Many Stories
• Read in your pajamas
• Flashlight Friday (read with flashlights in class)
• Snuggle up and read (with a stuffed animal)
• Readers are Leaders
• Read My Shirt Day
• Rainbow Day (wear as many colors as you can)
• Caps for Sale Day or any book where the character wears a hat
• Fairy Tale or Folktale Day (since many stories from other cultures were passed down from generation to generation)

5. Reading Challenge

Give students a reading log so they can record their reading. Depending on the grade they can keep track of the books they read or the minutes/pages read. When students turn in the log they can earn a prize. I usually have PTO donate small prizes or use my book fair money. I also like to create a hallway display of some kind showing the number of books or pages read by everyone in the school.

If you are in need of a library fundraiser, you can combine this reading challenge with a read-a-thon.

Multicultural and Diversity Reading Activity Pack

In my store, I have an activity pack that goes along perfectly with these ideas. You can use the activities during a Read Across America event or any time you want to have a celebration of reading.

My goal in creating this product is to teach students to accept people who are different from them and to show empathy for others.

What is included in this activity pack:

Reading logs to encourage reading at home.

There are 3 different reading logs. One for younger grades, one for older grades, and a generic weekly reading log. The reading logs also come in an editable PowerPoint so you can change the directions to suit your needs. Only the directions are editable.

Posters & Bookmarks

9 color posters to display with quotes about diversity, respect, and kindness. These are perfect to use in the library or in the hallway.

This resource also includes bookmarks to hand out to students. You can choose to print them in color or print in black & white and let students color them. These make a great reminder long after Read Across America week is over.

Random Acts of Kindness Activities

This resource also includes a focus on kindness and acknowledging it when we see it. The Random Acts of Kindness cards and posters are perfect for an interactive display. Students can fill out a card every time someone is kind to them. There are a variety of cards in both color and black and white. There are posters you can use for the display as well.

Culture, Diversity, and Kindness Lessons

I created a few basic lessons on culture, diversity, and kindness so that you can have a done-for-you option. These lessons are on three different levels so you will have an activity for all your students in a K-5 school.

The activities include:

• Cut and paste kindness sort (K – 1)
• Kindness fill-in poster (K – 1)
• A 5-page mini book that gives the definition of culture and diversity. It also talks about respect and accepting others for their differences. (2 – 3)
• Worksheet: students write/draw how they are the same and how they are different from one of their classmates. There is also a similar worksheet in a Venn diagram format. (2 – 5)
• One-page biography of Malala Yousafzai for fourth and fifth grade students. Includes a reading comprehension page. There is also a worksheet with three quotes from Malala. Students will read the quote and write about what it means. (4 – 5)

Digital Activities

This resource also includes some digital components that you can use. If you are in a 1:1 school you can assign these to students. If not, these are perfect to project during your lesson so the entire class can see them at the same time.

• Reading Logs: these come in 3 different levels/versions.
• Culture and Diversity mini book or reader. Audio is included.
• Malala Yousafzai biography and comprehension questions.

Add these ready-to-use resources to your Read Across America toolbox and you’ll be ready to focus on diversity and kindness all week long!

Free Resource Library Activities

In the free resource library, there are a couple of additional activities that go along with all of these ideas. Everything in the resource library is free for newsletter subscribers. Click on the images below and enter the subscriber password or sign up to become a subscriber.

More Ideas for Sharing Multicultural and Diverse Books

If you’re looking for some multicultural and diverse books to read with your students read these two blog posts.

• Diverse and Multicultural Picture Books
• Picture Books About Children with Different Abilities

More Read Across America Ideas

Looking for even more ideas for Read Across America week? Check out these ideas that are fairly easy to do.

• Bookmark decorating contest
• Poster contest
• Book themed door decorating contest
• Schedule an author visit
• Look online for authors who will do a Skype visit
• Invite guest readers to come in and read a book to students
• Hold a book tasting (read more about how to do this here)
• Display quotes about diversity and kindness
• Have your principal read a book over the loudspeaker or during the morning announcements
• Have DEAR time every day
• Have students write a letter to an author
• Have a book swap

Save these Ideas

Pin this post to your favorite library Pinterest board so you can come back when you are ready to put these ideas into action.