SOLSC '23 Day 4: Ten minutes at a time

 

I paused yesterday to reflect on a shared accomplishment. 

The background info:  last school year, I read Captain Superlative aloud to several classes at once, via Google Meet.  We had a standing appointment for ten minutes a day.  I had an ulterior motive of inspiring kids to perform their own acts of kindness as they were learning to re-socialize themselves after COVID isolation.  

I didn't count on the actual enjoyment factor--but several students asked for another joint read-aloud this school year. Without really thinking it through, I picked one of my favorite fantasy books--Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

It's 388 pages long, with fairly dense text.  Dense enough that I could only read four to five pages at a time during our ten minute appointments.

We started on September 20th with two fifth grade classes and a third grade class listening in, but the storyline was a bit much for two of the classes.  I did record each session and shared them with the original teachers, in case they had students with more stamina who wanted to keep up.

One fifth grade class hung in there. I would check in occasionally with their teacher and ask if they were still engaged, still interested in the story, and she said yes, so we kept plugging along.  

And on February 23rd, I recorded the final twenty-minute-long read-aloud so they could have the ending on a Friday when we couldn't meet live.  I choked through the bittersweet part, and felt sad as I closed the book one last time--the good sort of sadness one feels at finishing a great story, leaving that world for now.

We did it together, three hundred eighty-eight pages, ten minutes at a time.