skip to page content

RCAA Event Planning

Your celebration can be as simple or elaborate as time and inclination allow. Whether you choose to shoot for the stars or keep it simple, keep in mind the basic premise, and your event is almost certain to be a success!

The DCMP supports the NEA’s Read Across America by providing educators, parents, and caregivers with the resources they need to keep students reading throughout the year. For example, some DCMP media titles include online lesson guides, and the guides will help you plan a fun and exciting RCAA event.

Plan your event before you dive in head first!

Here’s a list of suggested preliminary steps to take before or as you begin your planning:

  • Get your principal or superintendent’s approval to conduct an RCAA event.
  • Check your school calendar and decide on a day to celebrate. Though Dr. Seuss’ birthday falls on March 2, you can schedule your event(s) on any day that is convenient for your school or organization. Remember: RCAA is a year-long celebration of better literacy through captioning!
  • Read the NEA’s copyright and licensing arrangements regarding the use of content owned by Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
  • Consult with your outreach staff, and encourage them to get other local schools involved.
  • Inform other teachers about the event.
  • Tell your students’ parents about the event.
  • Gather support from local resources.
  • Explore the Read Across America website fully.
  • Get your Cat in the Hat hats and celebrate the big day!

Try some of these fun activities and ideas to make your event a success!

Once you’ve taken care of the preliminaries, add a splash of creativity to your RCAA event by building on some of the following suggested activities/resources:

  • Invite a local author or celebrity to read from a book that a captioned media title is adapted from, or they may read from another book on a similar subject as the captioned media title that you are showing.
  • Set up a round-robin viewing, with students moving from classroom to classroom, watching different short captioned media titles at each stop.
  • After viewing a captioned media title, have students write the next chapter to the story.
  • Ask the children to name their favorite media titles. Tabulate the results and post the list.
  • Create a bulletin board of teachers’ and students’ favorite media titles for the classroom.
  • Have students fill out Dr. Seuss birthday cards with the name of a media title they watched and the book it was adapted from. Put the cards up around the school to recognize students for their participation and/or mail them to the DCMP. The DCMP will send a thank-you letter.
  • Invite a local captioning company [PDF] to come and demonstrate how media is captioned.
  • Add to your library’s collection by requesting new and used books that are available free of charge to schools for participating in “Read Across America” and other literacy programs. One such program, LEFBooks (LEF stands for the Literacy Empowerment Foundation), has distributed over 40,000 books to U.S. schools.
  • Try reading captions across America by the mile. Assign each media title a value in miles, and let the students accumulate miles to “travel” across the United States. Mark their progress on a big map. Or read captions across America by having students watch media titles of stories that take place in each of the 50 states or non-fiction titles that highlight states or regions.
  • Ask your cafeteria manager to create a special meal (such as green eggs and ham) or an RCAA birthday cake that displays “Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!” A large poster listing the foods and which stories they are from brings the student’s interest back to the books and media titles.
  • Plan a week of zany dress-up days to celebrate your reading theme (Fox in Socks Day, Kid in a Hat Day, Grinch Green Day, etc.). Organize a costume parade including both staff and students.
  • Ask administrators to do something wacky if students reach a particular viewing goal before the RCAA celebration. Some principals have eaten worms, jumped in frozen lakes, dyed their hair purple, or even kissed pigs!
  • Print and use the Read Across America Event Kit [PDF] (The 2008 version of the Read Across America Event Kit as well as the 2006 version [PDF] is also available) from Seussville.
  • Award RCAA participants with a certificate of participation [PDF] and prizes at the end of your celebration.
  • Forward RCAA information and resources to other teachers and outreach personnel.
  • Order the media you plan to use for your event well in advance! We’ve put together some suggestions of DCMP media for your RCAA event, but feel free to browse or search the DCMP catalog to create your own customized list.
  • Update your bulletin board and website or blog with pictures of students and staff taking part in RCAA-related activities. Share these pictures on the Read Captions Across America Flickr group (if you don’t have a free Flickr account and don’t wish to sign up for one, you can e-mail your pictures to the DCMP, and we’ll post them for you).
  • Don’t forget to e-mail the DCMP at tlohman [at] dcmp [dot] org to pledge your event.
  • For more ideas on planning a RCAA event, see the NEA’s “Read Across America” website.

Make a bigger impact by involving your community!

Here is a list of ways that you can help us make this annual event a success from the start!

  • Get others in your community involved. Contact local celebrities, sports teams, politicians, and authors, and invite them to take part in your event and activities.
  • Contact teachers and administrators at other local schools or organizations that are staging Read Across America activities and tell them about RCAA. Offer tips on how to include captioned media in their own Read Across America events. If you have the resources and time to do so, offer to stop in and host the event yourself!
  • Generate a story about the event on your local television news or in your local newspaper. The NEA has posted a great list of PR tools for Read Across America that you may want to take a look at before making contacts. The DCMP has a press release to announce RCAA.
  • Distribute DCMP flyers to teachers, librarians, special education coordinators, and school administrators.
  • Include an article about the events you are planning in your school’s newspaper or newsletter to parents.
  • Join the RCAA Flickr group and use the photos there to promote your RCAA event on your website or blog.
  • Promote your RCAA event on your organization’s Facebook, MySpace, or other social-networking profile. Utilize a free event promotion service like Eventful.com to spread the word!
  • Place the RCAA posters and flyers in prominent, high-traffic areas in schools, libraries, or other locations where Read Across America events are to be held. To download or order the poster, please visit the DCMP website.
  • Send a link to the RCAA Events & Activities guide to everyone in your network, school, and listservs. Do a search for other organizations or education representatives that you can send this information to as well.