March 2nd is Read Across America Day! Many classrooms celebrate on this day, during the first week of March or even for the whole month! There are so many ways to share amazing books with your students. I’ve pulled together some Read Across America ideas to help you celebrate!
You can check out all these ideas in my Read Across America YouTube video too!
Read Across America Ideas
Book Madness
What happens when you combine Read Across America and March Madness? Book Madness!
This was a favorite in my 5th grade classroom. I pulled together 16 books that we had read together as a class. Each week we voted on the two books that went up against each other. Until finally, we were down to 2 class favorites.
Everyone was on the edge of their seats to see which book won the final round!
The cards for each round are from The Brown Bag Teacher!
Battle of the Books
Battle of the Books is a similar concept to Book Madness, but can be done in a shorter time span. Choose a handful of books that you have shared together as a class. The books can be focused on a theme, an author or just ones that you know were class favorites.
Have each student choose their favorite book. Tally up the results to see which one was the winner!
This makes a neat bulletin board too and a great visual for students.
Read-a-Thon
There are so many ways to do a read-a-thon with your students! You could…
- Invite a guest reader into the classroom (even virtually!). Check out this guest reader post for more ideas.
- Stop and read throughout the day (even in the middle of a math lesson!)
- Track how many minutes you read together as a class.
- Schedule a day of reading in your classroom.
- Have the whole school stop everything and read at the same time!
Themed Read-Alouds
Check out the NEA website for more themes on diversity and inclusion!
Celebrate Read Across America by literally…reading across America! The Book Wrangler has an amazing list of books that represent every state in the country.
And The Tutu Teacher has pulled together some wonderful books for a variety of themes that will highlight the diverse culture that makes up our country!
And if you are looking for even more ideas, there are a bunch of reading activities in this World Read Aloud Day post that would work for Read Across America as well!
What are some Read Across America ideas that you have used in your classroom?
Want to save these ideas for later? Just pin the image below!
