Here is our Popplet characterization for Ally! 
America
Phillip Brooks’ Inspired Learners
Hello from California!
Hello! We are the Phillips Brooks School. We have six classrooms participating in the Global Read Aloud. The 4th and 5th graders will be reading Fish in a Tree, and the 3rd graders will be reading The Year of Billy Miller. We are so excited be a part of the Global Read Aloud. Phillips Brooks is located in Northern California, not far from beautiful sunny beaches and mesmerizing snowy mountains. Here are the top five things we love about our school.
1. The kind students and faculty
2. The technology we get to use
3. Fun specialist classes we have like music and art.
4. After- school activities such as cooking, art, and chess.
5. Our core values – kindness, community, love of learning, and courage.
Written by Emma and Rhea
LA 6 Heffler
Demarest Middle School- Demarest, New Jersey
We are 85 students in the sixth grade at Demarest Middle School. Our school houses grades 5-8. Demarest is a small town in Northern New Jersey, but quite close to New York City. In the center of town is a beautiful duck pond, and historic train station, surrounded by a few shops. We are a 1:1 school, and are lucky enough to have Macbooks for each student. We enjoy all four seasons, and are looking forward to the fall when we begin the Global Read Aloud with Fish In A Tree.
We just received a signed poster from the author in the mail!
DND 2nd Graders
We are excited to be reading The Year of Billy Miller for the 2015 Global Read Aloud. We are the DND 2nd Graders and are part of K-1-2 multi-age classroom. The K-1 members of our classroom will be participating in the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Global Read Aloud Author Study.
Our school is located in Oak Park, IL, which borders the western edge of Chicago. Illinois is situated on Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes. Approximately 430 students attend Whittier, which is a K-5 building, and our classroom has 20 students. We have art, gym, music, library and Spanish in addition to our core subjects of reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.
Our town has visitors from around the world because a famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, lived and worked here. Ernest Hemingway was also born here. Students enjoy our beautiful parks, fun extracurricular activities that include ice skating, playing sports such as soccer or t-ball, break dancing, ballet, hip-hop, and swimming. We also enjoy the proximity to Chicago and can take a Metra train or elevated “El” ride into Chicago to enjoy the Lake Michigan beaches and many museums.
20Somethingkids in Second Grade:
We are a group of super 2nd graders in a suburb of St. Louis, MO. One thing that’s special about our class is that most of us were together in 1st grade, and looped to 2nd grade together! We’re excited to have many new friends joining us and are working on building a strong, respectful community of learners.
St. Louis is in MO, which is in the middle of the United States. We are close to the Mississippi River, which pretty much cuts our country in half, and is important for trade. Our town, which is called Kirkwood, is small and close-knit, even though it’s technically part of a big city. We have a small school district, too, with only 5 elementary schools. Kirkwood is famous for trains, and we have a really great downtown area around the train station where people (including kids after school!) like to hang out. I love the close, family feel that the community has, even in the midst of a metropolis like St. Louis.
Here are a few pictures of places around town (our town and the big city!):
We are excited to read The Year of Billy Miller, and to learn from other readers around the world! We love to connect with other learners and share our knowledge as well. This is our first time doing the Global Read Aloud and we can’t wait for it to start. 🙂
Ms. Cooper’s 5th Grade, New Buffalo, Michigan
We are fifteen students in a 5th Grade class at New Buffalo Elementary School. New Buffalo is a small Midwest town located in Southwestern Michigan. Our town can be found on the shore of Lake Michigan and right on the border of Michigan and Indiana. We enjoy warm summers and snowy winters. We look forward to connecting with schools around the world while reading Fish in a Tree.
Galloway 5th Grade, Atlanta, GA
Our Galloway fifth graders are participating in the GRA for the third year. We are an independent school located in beautiful Chastain Park in Atlanta, GA. Our 41 fifth graders are middle schoolers, unlike many of our local schools, so they come to me only for Language Arts, and they enjoy feeling a little more grown up and independent! The Galloway culture is strong on reading and many of our students participate in Book Clubs and Reading Bowls after school. Our library is an unusually energetic and inviting place that grows readers.
Last year, we loved figuring out where our partner schools were using Mystery Skype and yes or no questions. We are reading Fish in a Tree, by Lynda Mullaly Hunt this year. We are willing to Skype, use Edmodo, try Edublog….or share Google Docs. Notice and Note (Kylene Beers and Bob Probst) close reading strategies were immensely helpful last year and we will be looking for signposts as we read. We look forward to making connections with you!
4th Grade at Westwood Elementary, Spring Branch ISD, Houston, TX
This is my third year to participate in the GRA experience. We are a class of 9 and 10 year olds. We are located in Houston, Texas. Houston is the 4th most populated city in the nation and is the largest in the southern USA and Texas. It was founded in 1836. We are located near Galveston, which a coastal city in the Gulf of Mexico. We are 43 feet above sea level. It is a large metropolis that extending to Galveston Bay. Space Houston is located nearby, which has the visitor center NASA where the astronauts train and flight control is located there. We have a theater district located near downtown. The outer areas of Houston are made up of smaller communities called suburbs. We are home to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. We are a city that enjoys our sports teams, such as, Houston Texans (football), Astro’s (baseball), Rockets (basketball), and Dynamos (soccer). We are looking forward to reading Fish in a Tree and making connections around the world.
Level 3 at Hawthorne STEM Waukesha Wisconsin USA
This is our second year participating in Global Read Aloud. Last year we enjoyed interacting with students from within the United States as well as Canada. This year we are excited to connect with students even further. We are two classrooms together in a large space and students are in grades 4 and grades 5 – we teach in a multiage format. I am the literacy and social studies teacher lead, my teaching partner is math and science lead and we plan and meet with students centered around their individual needs and strengths. Waukesha is outside of Milwaukee Wisconsin which is the largest city in our state, located next to Lake Michigan. We are looking forward to reading Fish in a Tree.