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Lift Off To Literacy will kick off their 6th Year Anniversary by hosting two September Literacy celebrations.
**INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY**
**AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR BRIAN LIES VISIT**
**AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR BRIAN LIES VISIT**
The Lift Off To Literacy program will host their annual kick off on September 9th to coincide with International Literacy Day. (September 8th was declared International Literacy Day by UNESCO in 1966.) International Literacy Day celebrations will take place around the world over the weekend and on Monday, September 9th. This year’s ILD theme will focus on ‘Literacy and Multilingualism.’ These celebrations are to remind the public and young learners the importance of literacy. These special events, including ours will shine a spotlight on global literacy needs —literacy for everyone, everywhere!
Our event on Monday, will be a “mini” kick off including a special video made by Brian Lies (pronounced Lees), NYT-bestselling children’s author/illustrator (including 2019 Caldecott Honor Book THE ROUGH PATCH & GOT TO GET TO BEAR’S!). Mr. Lie’s video will touch on International Literacy Day as well as provide an introduction about himself. We can’t wait to hear what this author/illustrator, reader, gardener, and book enthusiast has to say…and guess what? Brian will be our visiting author for our grand kick off on September 26th.
During our September 9th event, learners will also be introduced to Mr. Lie’s books and we know we already have some special fans of his acclaimed The Rough Patch — a fifth grade favorite! Book signings will be available on September 26th.
This is all very exciting and the Lift Off To Literacy Committee is once again honored to play a part in the continuation of Building a Culture of Literacy at our school.
Welcome author, Brian Lies!
We are excited to continue our reading incentive program this year and have some special surprises in store—lots of signed books by Mr. Lies, and an emphasize on previous Caldecott and Newberry recipients.
On the day of our author event, Brian is willing to sign and personalize books. For your convenience, here is a link to his award winning book: The Rough Patch.
Brian will be visiting our school on September 26th for our grand kickoff. We are honored to have such a special author visit our school. This is a wonderful opportunity for our learners to be able to meet and learn first-hand a Caldecott honoree winner. We thought you would like to learn more about Brian—please enjoy the following bio:
Brian Lies was born in Princeton, NJ, and graduated from Brown University in 1985 with a degree in British and American Literature. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for 2.5 years, and created Op/Ed page illustrations for numerous publications, including the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Christian Science Monitor. He illustrated his first children’s book for Houghton Mifflin Company in 1989, and has since illustrated nearly thirty others, including his 2019 Caldecott Honor-winning The Rough Patch, and his New York Times bestselling bat series (Bats at the Beach, Bats at the Library, Bats at the Ballgame and Bats in the Band). Brian’s work has garnered many publishing awards, and can be found in galleries around the country. He enjoys visiting elementary schools around the US, talking about writing and illustration. He and his wife, Laurel, live in Duxbury, MA with their daughter and two cats.
Enjoy this book trailer of his acclaimed: Bats at the Ballgame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0sG_Z29b5s#action
Enjoy this book trailer of his acclaimed: Bats at the Ballgame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0sG_Z29b5s#action
On the grand kickoff day, classrooms will blast off with our traditional classroom rockets to track their progress for the 60-60 Read-Aloud challenge! Get ready for some cool surprises!
For those of you new to the school, The Lift Off To Literacy program is a Tykes-5th grade reading incentive program that began six years ago. The year of conception being themed "Lift Off To Literacy" which focused on building a love of reading and establishing positive reading habits –thus our ongoing 60-60 Read-Aloud Challenge (as it takes 60 days to create a habit.)
During our second year, "The Power of the People: Make a Movement" – we focused on what people can accomplish when they work together, and focused on a country that exemplifies that philosophy, which was the Philippines. Our school worked as a team on displaying and truly living as a school full of book-loving learners and our teachers and administrators became “Book Whispers!”
During the third year, "Steps to Advance Literacy", we focused on the distance some students in countries with developing economies need to go each day simply to attend school while tracking our own steps as learners. Our country of focus was Jamaica.
Our fourth year's theme, "Always Learning" was adopted from the school-wide theme and we used the opportunity to culminate of all that we had learned over the past few years concerning our reading incentive program. We specifically thrived with Mr. Saltzberg's messages concerning creativity and making a mistake into a Beautiful Oops!
We excited launched our fifth year’s theme, "Building a Culture of Literacy", which seems only fitting for a fifth year anniversary!!! A literacy culture means children, and even family members are engaged in literacy experiences during and after school in ways that create a lifelong love of reading and don't feel like an assignment. As we continue to Build our Culture of Literacy – be prepared to hear your child talk passionately about a book they just love…
During our second year, "The Power of the People: Make a Movement" – we focused on what people can accomplish when they work together, and focused on a country that exemplifies that philosophy, which was the Philippines. Our school worked as a team on displaying and truly living as a school full of book-loving learners and our teachers and administrators became “Book Whispers!”
During the third year, "Steps to Advance Literacy", we focused on the distance some students in countries with developing economies need to go each day simply to attend school while tracking our own steps as learners. Our country of focus was Jamaica.
Our fourth year's theme, "Always Learning" was adopted from the school-wide theme and we used the opportunity to culminate of all that we had learned over the past few years concerning our reading incentive program. We specifically thrived with Mr. Saltzberg's messages concerning creativity and making a mistake into a Beautiful Oops!
We excited launched our fifth year’s theme, "Building a Culture of Literacy", which seems only fitting for a fifth year anniversary!!! A literacy culture means children, and even family members are engaged in literacy experiences during and after school in ways that create a lifelong love of reading and don't feel like an assignment. As we continue to Build our Culture of Literacy – be prepared to hear your child talk passionately about a book they just love…
This year’s sixth year will continue under the Building a Culture of Literacy umbrella with a micro focus on ‘Literacy and Multilingualism.’ Our micro focus was designed to concentrate on addressing the literacy challenges, specifically in developing countries and to embrace linguistic diversity and literacy development in education. (Multilingualism—the ability of an individual speaker or a community of speakers to communicate effectively in three or more languages.) We will host several literacy celebrations throughout the year. These celebrations are to remind the public and young learners the importance of literacy. These special events, including ours will shine a spotlight on global literacy needs —literacy for everyone, everywhere! This year we will continue to use the platform of monthly classroom literacy meeting with all K-5th grade learners to share all things literacy! We will host read alouds and conduct book talks all about the book selections, authors, & illustrators. This year’s literacy meetings will focus on classics as well as the brand new Caldecott and Newberry recipients which will be announced in January.
The Lift Off To Literacy committee will often utilize the school’s MTV broadcasts to teach our learners all about the history of the Caldecott Medal and the last 80 gold medal recipients.
A special note of acknowledgment and heartfelt appreciation to Mr. Brian Lies for providing the one of a kind artwork for this year's poster. Our school will forever treasure this masterpiece.
