It’s River Hawks Read Week here at Avon Central Schools!

The brainchild of Middle School Library Media Specialist Jessica Mucci, this program kicked off last year as Avon Athletes Read and was intended as a way to get elementary schoolers interested in reading by bringing varsity student athletes in to speak with them about the connection between being a good reader and being an athlete.

This year, Mucci, High School Library Media Specialist Suzanne Freeman and Ian Smith, Innovative Program Specialist down at Avon Elementary, decided to expand eligibility for the program - and rebrand it as River Hawks Read - to give more high school students the opportunity to participate.

We headed down to the elementary school this morning for Kristen H. and Olivia W.’s read aloud.

Both sophomores, Kristen and Olivia did a brief Q&A with Jennifer Leonard’s first grade class, then read “Don't Think of Tigers,” by Alex Latimer aloud to the class.

Our younger students had a lot of good questions for Kristen and Olivia, including what their favorite books were when they were in elementary school (for the record - Kristen enjoyed the “Pigeon” book series by Mo WIllems and Eleanor Catton while Olivia was a fan of the “Dork Diary” series by Rachel Renée Russell).

After the read aloud, Kristen, Olivia and Leonard’s first graders did an activity inspired by “Don’t Think of Tigers” which, as you may have guessed, begs readers NOT to think of the striped jungle predator.

Students imagined an animal, drew it secretly on a piece of paper, then tried to guess which animal their classmates had drawn.

Any guesses what the most popular animal was?!

Such a fun morning - thanks to Mr. Smith, Mrs. Bird and Kristen and Olivia for letting us stop by! 

Oh, and don’t forget to check out the photo album from this morning over on our Facebook page at the link below.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=100064703294390&set=a.1072924471540986