10,000 participate in Coweta’s Read for the Record on October 21

10,000 participate in Coweta’s Read for the Record on October 21

10,220 children were read a story in Coweta County schools on Tuesday.

The students were read “Bunny Cakes,” by Rosemary Wells, as a part of the 2014 Read for the Record event. Across the county, teachers, parents and other guest readers came to classrooms to share the story about rabbits making birthday cakes for their grandmother.

Coaches from Coweta’s three high schools were this year’s official Celebrity readers, including East Coweta High School coaches J. R. Revere, Chris Hardin and Alicia Porras, Newnan High School coaches Leslie Fant, Hap Hines and Rogeric Ladd, and Northgate High School coaches Sarah Frazier, Marcellous Johnson and Becky Lowery.

Videos of the coaches reading the story were posted online at the cowetaschools.org website for classes around the county . To see their online story-telling, go to www.cowetaschools.org/index.php/component/content/article/338-ccss-video-links.

“The students were excited to see coaches from the high schools,” said Coweta School Language Arts and Social Studies Specialist Paula Baker, who helped organize this year’s event. “Many of them have older siblings who play sports for these coaches. The elementary students were thrilled to have in-person readers visit them and talk about the differences they could hear between them and the celebrity readers.”

Kindergarten students at Ruth Hill Elementary visited Smokey Road Middle School to make bunny ears and hear media specialist Jamie Smith read the story. The 5-year-olds were hosted by the middle school’s Future Educators Association students.

“Our club is an official partner with Jumpstart’s Read for the Record,” said Smokey Road teacher Pam Brown. After the story, the Ruth Hill kindergarteners colored bunny ears to wear, sorted groceries like the characters in the book, and held a relay race to find particular items from a pretend grocery store.

Others schools guests readers included parents and grandparents, Arnall and Newnan High students, and Central Educational Center Teacher Pipeline students.

Thousands of schools, libraries and daycare center nationwide participated in Read for the Record on October 21 in an attempt to break a world record by reading the same story to millions of children in one day.

Coweta County participates each year in the event, which is intended to support literacy and promote early childhood education. Last year, the county’s students were among 2.46 million children who participated world-wide.