“”LA CROSSE, Wis., (October 29, 2021) – This week, over 300 students and staff at North Woods International School participated in the 16th annual Jumpstart Read for the Record. The North Woods family gathered to read, laugh, and learn as they participated in the world’s largest shared reading experience.
Students were able to join a story walk, combining the pleasure of reading the book aloud while walking together outdoors. A story walk is a fun, educational activity that places the pages from a children’s story along a walking route around the outside of the school. The story walk helps build student interest in reading while encouraging healthy outdoor activity and promoting the school’s theme of unity for both children and adults.
The school’s permanent outdoor story walk installation was funded through a grant from the La Crosse Public Education Foundation to get all students involved with reading in a fun and engaging way regardless of their reading level. The story walk feature helps add over 800 additional hours of reading at North Woods each year.
“This is another great way to connect kids to reading,” said North Woods International teacher Sara DePaolo. “Active learning is a goal at North Woods, and we hope the event sparks continued interest in story walks at school and develops some lifelong readers as well.”
Each year, Jumpstart selects one children’s book for Read for the Record. This year’s book is “Amy Wu and the Patchwork Dragon” by author Kat Zhang. The book is a celebration of cultural symbols, family, and self-affirmation. When Amy Wu’s class is making their own dragons at craft time, Amy creates a dragon with a long, wingless body, stag-like horns, and eagle claws, but her friends don’t think it’s a real dragon. Then Amy tries making dragons that look like theirs, but none of them feels quite right. After school, a story from Grandma sparks new inspiration, and together with her family, Amy finally makes a dragon that feels right for her.
The annual campaign was launched over a decade ago to highlight the importance of building early literacy and language skills for every child. In 2013, Jumpstart broke the world reading record with 2,462,860 children and adults included in the shared reading experience. Each year, the event brings together over 2 million people in classrooms, libraries, community centers, and homes across the United States.
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