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Dear Friends of Reading to Kids,
"It has been my great pleasure to host Reading to Kids book clubs for Leo Politi Elementary. I will always remember the first virtual meeting after the school closure. Students were so happy to see their grade level friends whom they hadn't seen for several weeks. While I hope schools will open soon so we can meet with each other in person, I am so grateful to Reading to Kids for carrying on the second Saturday tradition for all of our students!"
Charlene Fenton, Assistant Principal at Politi Elementary
JANUARY 9TH READING CLUBS
RSVPS NOW OPEN!
Hooray, we have opened the
January 9th reading clubs RSVPs!
If you have ever read with us at any of our prior reading clubs (face-to-face or virtual), please RSVP now at our homepage at
www.readingtokids.org or keep checking back to submit your RSVP for our virtual reading clubs on January 9th!
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. See further below how virtual clubs work.
MORE SPOTS MIGHT OPEN OVER THE NEXT WEEK!
These January reading clubs will be a bit smaller because the schools will still be on their Winter recess.
If you check the website and find it is full, please keep checking back throughout the next week - we may have additional teachers confirm as Zoom hosts, allowing us to open additional volunteer spots.
OPERATIONS VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
(Click the above image to see full sized!)
For our virtual reading clubs we need experienced volunteers to
help train volunteers to use Zoom or be a second or third virtual Site Coordinator
in our Zoom reading clubs for any of our schools.
Being a Site Coordinator guarantees you a (non-reading) spot at our next reading clubs, so please e-mail us at
info@readingtokids.org if you can help us create wonderful reading clubs!
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FINAL 37 HOURS TO DONATE TO OUR
2020 ANNUAL FUND DRIVE!
Today and tomorrow mark the final two days of our
Annual Fund Drive, and we are now
only $3,997 and 47 donors away from meeting our goal of
$60,000 from 500 donors!
Please help us by making your donation today at our
Annual Fund Drive page.
1) Donate by check or
online today. Contributions of
any amount are greatly appreciated!
2) Become our 8th Fundraising Angel and ask friends and family to contribute! We've
made it super simple - just create a quick
fundraising page on Facebook, or download and share our
donor sheet
and start asking, or spend a few minutes personalizing and
sending our
sample message.
3) Double your donation! Ask your employer to
match your donation to Reading to Kids and double your
impact.
We have so far received (or are expecting) matching donations from The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, Disney,
Oaktree Capital Management, Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors Foundation, LinkedIn, Numerator, Netflix, Edison International, PepsiCo, Macy's, Inc., ViacomCBS, Chevron, GE, AbbVie, and Wells Fargo, all through the efforts and requests of our volunteers who work for those companies.
Once your employer, friends, and family know about
Reading to Kids, many will want to donate to us
and are looking for a great cause to support -
we just need you to ask!
Note: If
donating by check, please make sure the check is dated on or
before December 31, 2020. If donating by credit card, the
donation must be made today or tomorrow.
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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!
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3 MORE RUNNERS WANTED FOR THE
2021 LA MARATHON,
1/2 MARATHON, OR 5K!
Since the Los Angeles Marathon rescheduled the LA Big 5K to Saturday,
May 22nd and the marathon to Sunday,
May 23rd, this means more time to train!
Do you know any runners? Are you a
runner? Please forward this email to them
and ask them to join
Team Reading to Kids in the 2021 Los
Angeles Marathon on Sunday,
May 23rd!
We're looking for three more marathon runners or Charity Challenge runners (the last 13 miles of the course) to join us in one of the best marathons in the country.
If either of those distances are too daunting, you can join us in the LA Big 5K (that's just 3.1 miles) near Dodger Stadium the day before the marathon on Saturday, May 22, 2021.
You can
share this Facebook group with any of your runner
friends to encourage them to join our team!
If you or a runner you know is interested in
becoming one of our fundraising runners or
creating a fundraising team, please email
Chris Martin at
marathon@readingtokids.org!
IMPORTANT NOTE: To register to run
on behalf of Reading to Kids, you
MUST receive from us a special web address
to use when registering on the Los Angeles Marathon website.
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