IRA’s Washington D.C. celebration
"Reading Across Continents" Pilot Project
Unites Washington, DC and Nigerians
September 8, 2008,
10 a.m to Noon
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library
901 G Street NW, Washington, DC
(Gallery Place Chinatown Metro)
RSVP to irawash@reading.org
Watch this event live! Check back for details.
"Reading Across Continents" - an international reading project
Through shared reading of two novels, the "Reading Across Continents" project unites Washington, DC's School Without Walls High School (SWW) students with their counterparts in secondary schools in Abuja, Nigeria. Via live feeds, author visits, international student/teacher exchanges, blogs, email, writing, reading, and the study of history, geography, and economy of the countries involved, the students and teachers in both countries reflect on their lives, convictions, and insights and connect with the overseas class.
Event details
One of the Reading Across Continents authors — and former Teacher of the Year— Sharon Draper, will be the special guest at the IRA International Literacy Day celebration on September 8, 2008 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Public Library in Washington, DC. Draper will meet with the SWW students and (through the cooperation of the US State Department) lead the inaugural live feed with the Abuja students of the Reading Across Continents project.
Program description
Throughout this project, US and Nigerian students will identify the similarities and differences of the two cultures described in Copper Sun (penetrating story of the slave trade) by US author Sharon M. Draper and Purple Hibiscus (heartfelt story of growing up in Nigeria's political tumult) by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
These author-led book talks will be broadcast to all classrooms in the District of Columbia Public Schools and also simulcast live to the students in Abuja. The students in Abuja will have the ability to ask questions in real time. In addition, Draper will travel to Abuja to do a similar talk with the participating Nigerian students. Nigerian author Adichie will travel to the Abuja schools as well.
Hundreds of students and six teachers will meet with the authors and the project calls for several students from SWWs to travel to Nigeria with filmmaker Mocha Ochoa to meet their counterpart students and teachers face-to-face. Ochoa is creating a documentary to be aired on PBS. Students and teachers from Nigeria will also travel to Washington, DC.
The participants encourage similar projects based on this model in school districts around the world.
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