Reading for the record

Contributed
Published: October 16, 2008

Gordon-Barbour Elementary School’s staff and students participated in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Oct. 2.  Read for the Record is a national campaign to encourage children and adults to read the same book on the same day while highlighting the importance of early education.
Throughout the day, more than 400 GBES students in Head Start, kindergarten, and grades 1-5 listened to staff members read Don Freeman’s Corduroy.  GBES students were included in the final count for the world record for the largest shared reading experience in history.  Last year’s record setting total was 258,000 people.  This year, more than 425,000 participants read Corduroy.
Gordon-Barbour staff and students were also encouraged to decorate a bear.  These bears line the hallways of Gordon-Barbour and are as unique as the individuals who created them, including Mr. “Beary”, GBES principal and Mrs. Poteet, the “libearian.“.  Some bears were painted using watercolors while others were painted using chocolate pudding.  Some bears were also dressed up using fabric, sequins, pom-poms, ribbons, and stickers. 
Everyone was very excited about reading this classic story and the possibility of breaking the world record.