We have very exciting news! Our experienced volunteers are invited to participate in our second-ever Reading to Kids Virtual Reading Clubs on Saturday, June 13th!

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.

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 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!

LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE

We are continuing to add groups as teachers decide to join us on June 13th, which is the day after the school year has ended. Please sign up today for one of the limited spots available. As the next seven days progress, additional spots may open. So, if you check the website and find it is full today, please keep checking back.

HOW TO RSVP

Visit our home page at www.readingtokids.org and submit your RSVP as usual. We hope you can join us for this continuing, exciting experiment!

Want to bring the joy of reading to the kids at our partner schools while everyone is staying safe at home? Then create and share your own read-aloud videos that end with a craft!

We're especially looking for videos of 4th and 5th grade "chapter books". We'd like to keep reading alive with the older kids by intriguing them with longer books we have read to them. You may only read aloud the first 40 pages or so, just as we do at our reading clubs.

We'd like to add your videos that the kids at our partner schools can find on our website.

Click this link for all of our tips and which books to read aloud, including tips from Chris Martin when he created his Oh, the Places You'll Go! video! Click the image below to jump to their crafts portion.