Summer Reading at HopRec!

Thanks to the efforts of Chariho teacher Brenda Medina, the Hopkinton Recreation Summer Read Aloud Program is in full swing!  The program invites Chariho staff members to volunteer an hour of their time to read aloud to the participants of Hopkinton Rec Summer Camp.  (The reading program is also taking place in Charlestown!)  The children are grouped according to age, and the readers can bring along their own favorites to share or the books can be provided.

This is the second year of the program, and I love it!  I signed up to take the same group every week: students going into fourth grade.  To help them along their way to qualifying for the Rooster Games next spring, we are reading the RICBA nominee The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary.  Each chapter concludes with a moral, and we've been discussing what they mean and how it reflects what happened in the story.

As an extension activity, I transformed a number of Aesop's fables into scripts for the children to perform.  Last week we tried it out for the first time, and we had a blast!  I was really impressed by the kids' enthusiasm and have started selecting pieces our next meeting.

During the read-through I helped the kids with pronunciations and defined words they didn't know.

All of the kids used a marker to highlight their own parts in the script.

I'll post a video of their first performance below.  Considering we only did one read-through, I was really impressed!  I plan to show it to them so they can critique what they did and discuss what they might want to improve the next time.  Keep an eye on the blog for more videos!  :)