Universal Children's Day

Today marks the 30^th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This international legal framework was a promise made by world leaders in 1959 to protect and fulfill the rights of children. Contained in this treaty is a profound idea that children are not just objects who belong to their parents and for whom decisions are made, or are adults in training. Rather, they are human beings and individuals with their own rights. Childhood is separate from adulthood, and lasts until 18; it is a special, protected time, in which children must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop, and flourish with dignity. For more on this topic, you can lean more here: https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/what-is-the-convention

Celebrating our children can be a great opportunity to introduce a special time for reading. Not only is it a great way to bond over a shared experience, you should not simply read to them, but share in reading duties to help them become stronger independent readers themselves.

There are countless other activities around reading that can be used to help your kids on their reading journey:

• Create a comfy place for your students to crack open a favorite story.
• Encourage buddy book reading in pairs.
• Ask them to tell you and their peers about the books they’ve read.
• How about you create a book club within your class by grouping 4-5 students together and assign the same book. Then after they're done you can show them how each group came to similar or different conclusions.

Any of the books that are chosen for these activities should be used to encourage conversation, such as the social issues that the content addresses. Make sure that your students learn that when it comes to reading, their experiences and feelings about the story are sometimes just as important as the text itself. 

For ideas on buddy book themes, check out our social emotional book collections.