Family Literacy Night

My school hosts a Family Literacy Night every year during the first week of March.  We invite students and their families to spend the evening celebrating reading and literacy.  The first grade classes usually open the evening with a couple of songs about books and reading.  Then we have break-out sessions.  Each session lasts 20 minutes and there are three different choices during each time slot.  Our evening involves presentations by the students, as much as possible.  They give book talks, present reader's theater, showcase book projects, or share research reports that they've done.  Our kindergarten teachers do a puppet show that is a big hit every year.  We have "Are You Smarter than a . . .(third grader, fourth grader, or fifth grader) where parents compete against their kids in answering test questions similar to those found on end-of-year tests.  The local public library is invited to share resources such as free e-books. One of the big hits of the evening are the free books that are given to each of our students and their pre-school age siblings.  These books are purchased with Title 1 funds.  There is a room assigned to each grade level where student can choose a book of their liking.  This evening also is the culmination of our One School, One Book project.  About a month ago, each family was given a copy of a novel, this year it was "The World According to Humphrey", along with a reading schedule.  Students have been winning prizes all month for correctly answering questions about the book.  At Family Literacy Night, the whole family gets to work together to answer questions about the book.  Prizes are given to the families with most correct answers.  The evening is capped off with ice cream.  As students and their families leave the building, they are all given ice cream sandwiches.  This evening has become an important tradition at our school, and is looked forward to by students and their parents, alike!