Community Literacy

One of my goals as an educator is to help promote literacy in my community. Our local library has a wide array of children's audiobooks available to check out with the accompanying picture book. This allows parents to make sure their kids are being read to even if they aren't able to do it themselves. My school's National English Honors Society requires that members buy a children's book and record themselves reading it to donate to the library. As a student at the same school, I loved this project. I used it as an opportunity to learn Audacity, a free audio-editing software, and make an audiobook complete with sound effects and "Clair de lune" playing in the background. For the project, I chose to read one of my favorite picture books--Stellaluna.

As an adult, I love this project for promoting community literacy. Not only does it give parents of young children a reading resource, but it also alerts high school students to the importance of reading to children and enriching their community. Furthermore, it gives students an opportunity to practice their reading fluency, which is a skill usually abandoned once they leave middle school.

I would love to expand this project to chapter books and short stories for middle grade readers eventually, perhaps as a long-term project for National English Honors Society members and sponsors.