Have parent volunteers work with students who need help to increase their word recognition and vocabulary. Set aside a morning of each week or every other week and focus all activities and lessons around a favorite children's book or books. Vocabulary, listening skills, silent and oral reading comprehension, and writing can all be incorporated into the morning's activities. A speaker could be invited and even a cooking activity to go along with the day's activities would be nice. Mount the caricature of a head of a cute caterpillar on your classroom wall and challenge your students to make him grow all around the room.
Students make the caterpillar grow by adding a segment for every book they read.
The students take turns sharing an interesting portion of a book recently read. The idea is to tempt one's classmates to read the book. Have students choose a famous person about whom to read and write a report. Then plan a day for the students to come to school dressed as that famous person and share interesting facts about him or her. Creativity, imagination, and projection are a natural out-growth of reading.