What is DEAR Day?
DEAR stands for Drop Everything And Read. The official DEAR day is April 12, which is the birthday of Beverly Cleary, the author who first mentioned DEAR day in her book Ramona Quimby Age: 8.
Many schools celebrate it on April 12th. Some schools have a daily DEAR time. But really you can have a DEAR day to promote literacy any time.
My school does two DEAR Days a year to promote literacy. We do one for Halloween usually in correspondence with Red Ribbon Week and one for Read Across America Week which is the first week of March.
Halloween we generally follow the Red Ribbon Week theme and the DEAR day is Friday and we have students dress as their favorite book character.
And some classes did a pumpkin book report activity.
For the Read Across America DEAR Day we choose different themes.
We have done Read Like a HERO. A Fave of mine I love this T-shirt from Lipstick and Littles that you can get HERE.
And The More You Know the More You Glow.
You can really choose any theme you like!
A DEAR Day is a great culmination to a Read Across America week.
Some activities we do for DEAR day are:
Guest Readers which can be Parents or Members of the Community or even the Principal and Specials teachers in your own building.
Book Challenges such as writing numbers 1-50 or 100 and having students write their name when they finish a book. I also have mystery numbers that win a random prize here and there.
Page Challenges when I taught upper grades we would have time challenges to see how many pages we could read or how many pages we could read all together in the day.
Theme Activities -these can do with the school wide theme or a certain genre.
Book Battles – we have had book brackets or school wide book book battles between 2 books.
Cozy Fireplace Reads – Allow students to bring a blanket or pillow and or stuffed animal and wear PJS and find a fireplace video on youtube while students Cozy up and Read – this is a great one for a December or January DEAR day.
DEAR Days are always some of the most memorable days of the school year and my absolute favorites!
I hope this post has given you some ideas for your School.
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