Classroom Campfire Reading
~ Jane Bartow

My third graders and I have one big sharing time at the end of each month. We make a big campfire (flashlights, logs, tissue paper fire) in the middle of the floor and we all gather around it. Then the children read something or part of something they've written during the month. The reader passes the flashlight for reading the text to the next reader after getting comments from friends. Sometimes this campfire takes three days at an hour a shot, but it's worth it in the sharing that goes on and in the ideas that are generated for new texts for writing. This is not a sharing for revision, but a celebratory celebration for the authors.