Middle Gate Celebrates Reading With Week Of Events

By Eliza Hallabeck

Middle Gate Elementary School celebrated a week of reading from Monday, April 9, to Friday, April 13, with multiple events, including a family book night, a visit from a nonfiction author, and more.

Middle Gate Language Arts Consultant Mary Blair said 70 families attended the family book night on Tuesday and by Thursday afternoon, Mrs Blair said the week was going great. Middle Gate Principal Christopher Geissler, agreed, saying the week, so far, was “awesome.”

Students dressed as their favorite characters on Wednesday for a Character Parade, and on Friday, students read “books on the beach,” in either the school’s library/media, cafeteria, or gymnasium.

In order to “read on the beach” in the gymnasium, students unfolded beach towels, wore sunglasses, and lay back with a book or multiple books on hand to read.

Nonfiction children’s science author Seymour Simon visited the school on Thursday to speak to students.

“We never should have named our planet Earth,” said Mr Simon to students before him in the school’s art room. “We should have called our planet Water.”

Mr Simon explained our planet’s surface is mostly water, and no other planet in the solar system has water on its surface.

While listing a number of his published books, The Moon, Mars, Saturn, Stars, and more, Mr Simon shared information about each of his books’ subjects.

When Mr Simon asked why astronaut Neil Armstrong’s footprints, made in 1969, were still on the moon, a student correctly  responded, “Because there is no wind on the moon.”

The footprints, Mr Simon said, will still be there in 30 years given no manmade incidents or meteorite disturbs the indentations.

After holding a ball up over his head and letting it drop to the floor, Mr Simon explained in the time it took the ball to fall to the floor, a spaceship sent to travel to the moon could have gone ten miles.

“We have not even seen to the ends of the universe,” said Mr Simon later in his presentation.

Mr Simon also explained he has written more books about other subjects than space.

Other events held at the school during the week included a staff book swap and guest readers visiting the school.