By Rebecca Kensil, Contributing Writer
Westborough – Community members visited Annie E. Fales Elementary School March 1 to celebrate two events – Dr. Seuss's birthday and Read Across America (RAA) Day.
The beloved children's author was born March 2, 1904. For the past 16 years, the National Education Association has promoted RAA as a way to encourage children to read.
At Fales, each adult read a book to children in a classroom and then explained a little about his or her life. The point of the activity was to show children that adults read too.
Kate Finn, a reading specialist at the school, organized the day's schedule.
“Reading isn's just something you do in school,” she said. “It's something you do frequently throughout your life, and we are trying to build the love of reading in lifelong readers.”
In addition to providing role-model readers for the students, the day allowed the children to meet four adults from Mill Pond School, where students will eventually move forward in their education as fourth-graders.
“When the third-graders go up to Mill Pond, they have a familiar face,” Finn said.
Some of the community readers included Mill Pond Assistant Principal Jeff Slomski?and
Superintendent of Schools Marianne O”Connor.
Click the link below to see a video of O”Connor reading the book “I Wanna Iguana” by Karen Kaufman Orloff to teacher Gina Sottile's first-grade class. Later in the video, students Oscar Hubbard, 6, and Brooke Rosenshine, 7, say a few words about why they enjoy reading.