Tweet For Literacy = Reading families

(Part of this article was taken from Katie & Kimble Blog by Linda Thieman. To see her original article click Katie & Kimble)


In November I was asked to participate in The First Annual Tweet For Literacy campaign with four authors and three mom/book bloggers using the Social Media platform of Twitter.  


On Twitter as @LindaThieman, author of Katie and Kimble, and I (@susieqtpies) co-chaired the  giveaway events, and ended up with 19 winners who divided up almost $2000 worth of prizes amongst them. The donated prizes consisted of literacy-related items: large numbers of children’s books contributed by authors, publishers and sponsors; books on parenting, reading skills, and building vocabulary; and other items like flash cards, puzzles and more.


We gave away a prize set every other day.  These items were all to encourage literacy and reading amongst families. 

In the end, we had over 4,400 entries and created a lot of excitement about getting books into the home and making reading together a frequent fun family activity. In January, 2010, Tweet for Literacy will announce the winner of the second half of the grand prize package—one elementary school has been chosen to receive a classroom set of the first two books in the Katie & Kimble: A Ghost Story series for third grade. Free classroom materials can be downloaded from the Katie & Kimble blog by teachers and homeschoolers to accompany these books. 



In this world full of electronics, we need to make sure that we are continuing to encourage our youth to use their words to describe what their eyes are seeing.  You can do that by discussing with your child what they are seeing on the computer.  When they play video games take time to ask them to describe what they are playing.  Encourage them to write a story about the characters in the game.   No matter what they are involved in encourage them to not just sit and watch but teach them to interact and think beyond just seeing.  


This post is part of the MAT@USC: Masters in Teaching Hope for the holidays event. Did you have an experience or witness something in 2009 which gave you hope for the future of American education? If so, please see this post for more information on how to share it.