Dear teachers,

The Orava Association is pleased to invite you to celebrate this year again the Read Aloud Week to take place from April 2 to 8, 2004. The main goal of this event is to encourage communication between the world of adults and children through stories and tales. We invite all teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings and other adults to join in this activity and help children discover the world of books and literature offering much joy knowledge. We look forward to responses of you, children and their parents and wish you many wondrous moments during this year's Read Aloud Week.

We are glad to organize the Read Aloud Week for the third year now, as we received great feedback from you in the past years. Perhaps you remember the games The World of Fantasy and The World of Wisdom. A great number of classes from all over Slovakia took part in these activities. This year we are continuing the tradition and with the help of the Orava art teacher Danka Facunova we prepared for you and especially for your younger students the game titled The Sea of Knowledge. You can download the game plan situated under the sea. Children will meet various sea creatures and after fulfilling the individual tasks they will receive seven keys that will help them discover the secret of the treasure chest. For each fulfilled task they receive one letter. The game plan is divided into seven parts representing seven days. Children to whom their parents or other adult read to for at least 10 to 15 minutes every day, can color each day one part of the sea track and answer one question. The goal of the game is to respond to all the seven questions, meet seven sea creatures and win seven letters (keys) that make up the answer to the question: "Who will find the treasure?"

Following last year's success we prepared again for the older students the game Draw Your Story. The class that decides for this activity should first agree on a book that they will be reading aloud every day in the course of one week in the class. Volunteers from among the students, as well as the teacher can take turns in reading. It is good to split the story up in seven equal parts for each day of the week. After reading allow students to think and discuss what they have read. The task of the students will be to describe by pictures and brief text the story they have been reading aloud. This way each student can create their own "comics" depicting how they see the most important parts and situations of the story read.

If you have other ideas about how to celebrate the Read Aloud Week, don't hesitate and send us you suggestions and experiences. We will be happy if you share your experience with events or activities your school or class participated in during the Read Aloud Week, if you send us kids' reactions, their drawings etc.

At the end of the week, ask your students to bring the colored game plans and comics back to school and in return please hand them out a Certificate of Participation in the Read Aloud Week you signed. You may wish to copy the certificate on a colored paper. We will also be very happy if you send us your ideas, suggestions, comments.