Reading to Young and Old Alike

At the high school where I teach, in an effort to promote literacy and giving, I have tried to encourage the idea of reading to small children at the Headstart program across the street. Students in our school jumped on the chance and before long I had a list of 25 volunteers to draw from. Our plan is that one day each week two students would select picture books, practice reading them, and then we'd "perform" for three different classrooms. Our first day was last Tuesday and it was a rousing success. Comments my students made were: "That was FUN!" and "They sure are an easy audience to please." I was thrilled it went so smoothly and I am looking forward to getting more high school students involved.

Later that night I gathered with ten others in a readers theatre group to perform at the local senior citizen's center. We read an old radio play... or actually an episode from a popular radio series. Perhaps some of our audience members remember the original Fibber McGee and Molly shows. I had a small part and it was rather fun to try this. Readers theatre is a nice way to perform: no memorization, props, or movement... just reading and I only hope our audience was able to actually HEAR us.

When these events were scheduled I didn't put two and two together but later I had to laugh that I was reading to both ends of the spectrum and if you counted the high school students I often read to during the day... you might say I had the full spectrum before me today.