September has arrived and we now have enough teachers committed to being Zoom hosts for our reading clubs on September 12th! We have very few spots, though, so they filled up quickly.
If you have ever read with us at any of our prior reading clubs, please visit our home page at
www.readingtokids.org to see if there any new openings for you to submit your RSVP for our next Reading to Kids Virtual Reading Clubs on Saturday, September 12th.
(If you are signed up but can't attend after all, please
click here to cancel so someone else can take your place!)
If you check the website and find it is full, please keep checking back, since additional spots may open over the next week.
We are
again limiting RSVPs for these virtual reading clubs only to returning
volunteers - people who have volunteered with us at least once before
at any of our previous face-to-face or virtual reading clubs.
If all spots are full you can also let us know at
info@readingtokids.org if you are willing to be a
"stand-by" reader on September 12th, someone willing to fill in for any
grade at any school if we have any last-second reader cancellations.
Stand-by readers must be available that Saturday morning from 8am to
around 11am and willing to read to any grade at any school.
HOW VIRTUAL READING CLUBS WORK
Because LAUSD teachers are
using Zoom to reach their students, we will use Zoom for these virtual reading
clubs. The reading clubs will be hosted by participating teachers at each school
using their school Zoom accounts, but you will need your own Zoom account to
join the reading club. If you don’t already have a Zoom account, you can sign up
for a free, Basic account here:
https://zoom.us/pricing
IMPORTANT:
You will need to use Zoom from a desktop or laptop computer. The phone and
tablet versions of Zoom do not have the necessary features for our virtual
reading clubs.
Ideally, anyone who
volunteers for these virtual reading clubs will be comfortable using
Zoom. If you wish to test out your Zoom connectivity prior to the
reading clubs, we encourage you to email us at
info@readingtokids.org so we may do a brief test run with you before the
virtual reading clubs.
The Friday before the
reading clubs you will receive a link for a Zoom "check-in" session with your
Site Coordinators that will begin promptly at 9:00 a.m. that Saturday.
Click here to review the schedule for these virtual reading clubs.
Once you and your fellow
volunteers are checked in, that same Zoom session will have a Zoom Volunteer
Orientation / Virtual Reading Club Training that will start promptly at 9:15
a.m.
At 9:30 a.m. you and your
volunteer partner will leave that Site Coordinator session and then join the
teacher's Zoom session. The teacher will host the Zoom call and make you
co-hosts. The first 30 minutes will be for troubleshooting and a prep session
for just you and your reading partner and the teacher.
The kids will join that
same reading club Zoom session at 10:00 a.m., and it will likely go until 10:30
or 11:00, at the teacher's discretion.
After the reading clubs
end you will then rejoin your Site Coordinator's Zoom call for a brief wrap-up.
To screen share the book
you will be reading with the children, you will need Adobe Acrobat or the free
Adobe Reader from
https://get.adobe.com/reader.
We will provide you a PDF
of the read-aloud book so you can prepare for the reading clubs. You can see the
read-aloud book titles for this month at
https://readingtokids.org/Books/BooksMonth.php.
We will provide at the
above link activities and simple craft ideas the kids can do at home. You would
prepare to lead the kids in an activity and craft, though you may not actually
do a craft, depending upon how the Zoom session goes. The kids may just want to
talk to new faces!
