Reading to Kids News

1) Donate by check or online today. Contributions of any amount are greatly appreciated!

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, Comcast NBCUniversal, LinkedIn, Numerator, Netflix, GE, Roblox, Blue Shield of California, and Altria, all through the efforts and requests of our volunteers who work for those companies.

Note: If donating by check, please make sure the check is dated on or before December 31, 2021. If donating by credit card, the donation must be made today, tomorrow, or Friday.

Last week we opened the January 8th reading clubs RSVPs, and we may still have an open volunteer spot!

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 "Mysteries & New Adventures" virtual reading clubs on January 8th!

We must continue to limit 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 below for how virtual clubs work.

The schools are still on their 3-week Winter Break, so we have somewhat fewer teacher hosts than usual for our Saturday, January 8th reading clubs.

If you check our website and find all reader spots are full today or next week, please keep checking back so we'll have enough volunteers.

STAND-BY READERS WANTED!
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 for Saturday, January 8th. A "stand-by" reader is 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 via Zoom to any grade at any school. It's a really important role!

OPERATIONS VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!

Volunteers checking in with their Site Coordinators on Zoom

Volunteers checking in for our Zoom reading clubs
on May 8th at Charles White Elementary

For our virtual reading clubs we need experienced volunteers to be a second or third virtual Site Coordinator in our Zoom reading clubs for any of our schools.

This smaller Winter Break reading club is one of the best times to step into this important role - all training pleasantly provided safely at home!

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!

Because LAUSD has not yet determined when volunteer organizations can return to on-campus events, we continue to 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.

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!

NINE RUNNERS NEEDED FOR THE
2022 LA MARATHON,
13.1 MILE CHARITY CHALLENGE,
OR 5K!

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 2022 Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday, March 20th!

We're looking for at least three more marathon runners and six Charity Challenge runners (the last 13.1 miles of the course) to join us in one of the best marathons in the country.

If either of those distances is 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, March 19, 2022.

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.