Planning an Open Mic Literacy Night

Last year, our school hosted its first Open Mic Literacy Night, giving students a chance to read their work onstage to an audience. The event was a huge success, and we plan on hosting it again this year. It was also a place for us to educate parents about the importance of reading with their children at home. It provided an opportunity for students, teachers, and community members to come together to celebrate the literacy learning taking place at our school, and it gave student voices a place to be heard.

Preparing for the event

As an instructional coach at our K–6 elementary school, I helped organize the event with a few other teachers. First, we created the flyer and distributed it to students at morning meetings a couple of months in advance. This allowed us to explain the Open Mic Literacy Night and get students excited about the possibility of sharing their work. We invited all students to read a poem, story, or project they had created.

We sent home a permission slip for kids who wanted to participate, which had to be signed by the parent agreeing to bring their child to the event and by the teacher verifying that the student had a complete piece of work ready to be presented. Twenty-five kids signed up, which turned out to be the perfect number of performances.

Those who signed up rehearsed onstage a couple of times before the big night to ease their anxiety about reading in front of others and to practice reading slowly and clearly into the mic. The kids put extra effort into editing their work, if necessary, to ensure that it was something they could be proud to share.

To involve our community, we asked our parent-teacher organization to advertise the event, and we invited district leaders to join us. We asked families to donate cookies and the local dairy farm to donate milk for our celebration. We turned our flyer into posters to hang up around the school, and you could feel the excitement building as kids asked each other, “Are you reading at the Open Mic?”

The big night

Finally, on the night of the event, we set up a couple of rocking chairs, an area rug, a mic, and string lights on the stage in our cafeteria to make it feel like a coffeehouse. About 100 audience members filled the room to listen to our students’ work. The kids who were reading showed up in their pretty dresses, ties, and fancy clothes, with a range of nervous anticipation.

Watching their confidence emerge as they stepped up onto the stage to read to the families and staff gathered was the highlight of the night. There was pride on the kids’ faces as they stood up to the mic—especially for some of our students with individualized education programs who may struggle in the classroom—this night was their chance to shine.

Laughter erupted from the audience when a fourth grader chose to read her “choose your own adventure” story, prompting the audience to select a funny ending for her story. One brave first grader took the stage to read her poem about the sun setting on the horizon, looking down on people sleeping at night. Another boy read a poem about his grandfather, who taught him to love old classic cars. The poem was about a ’66 Nova, but it was really about how much he loved his grandfather, who was there to watch the performance. Another student told a tale about her pretend day as an archaeologist and all she had discovered. The room was quiet as we listened to each story, and the audience applauded loudly after each one.

Our art teacher made a slide show to run in the background as kids read onstage, displaying photos of the work they would be reading, along with pictures of artwork she had created in collaboration with the classroom teachers for special projects related to their literacy topics. For example, one class created painted clay frogs in art class while studying and writing reports about animals in the rainforest. We also displayed this artwork at the event.

After the reading, the room buzzed with excitement, especially as people stopped our readers to ask questions or share comments on the piece they had read. Students realized that their work mattered to others and they could be proud of what they had created.

Literacy beyond the Open Mic

This event was also a way to engage teachers more deeply in our schoolwide literacy program. Teachers saved literacy work from their classrooms, such as writing assignments and performance tasks, which we displayed on tables on the night of the event, allowing us to showcase the hard work that teachers were doing with their students.

We asked each classroom teacher to select an engaging trade book, and we purchased a copy of that book for each student in their class using grant funding. Our third-grade teachers chose Everything You Need to Know About Frogs and Other Slippery Creatures to relate to their unit researching frogs, and our sixth-grade teachers chose The Sea of Monsters, which is book two in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, since their students were so engaged in the first book.

After the readings, we passed out a take-home bag with their teacher’s chosen trade book, information about our school literacy program, and ways to encourage parents to read at home with their child. Everyone enjoyed cookies and milk as families looked through their new book together and visited the tables displaying literacy projects from each classroom. Students who did not attend were given the take-home bag the next day in their classrooms, so every student received one.

Our Open Mic Literacy Night was an authentic way for our community to come together to celebrate the high-quality work of our young writers. On the way out the door, parents and grandparents stopped me to say thank you for creating an event where they could see their child excited about reading and presenting their work. A teacher told me, “Plan an event where the kids are onstage, and the families will come.” They did come, and their faces told me they were proud to be there. I knew at that moment we would do it again next year.