Wilton Public Schools and Community Collaborate for Wilton Reads

Wilton Public Schools, in collaboration with Wilton Library, created district-wide programming for this year’s Wilton Community Reads program. Wilton Public Schools is honored to have collaborated with the Community Reads program with age-appropriate book selections, author visits, and activities.

Using the Wilton Reads town selection about Wilton Connecticut, its people, history and progress as a springboard, the schools will explore the power of community and celebrate the people of the area. Through their programming and selections, the schools will celebrate how a community can come together to welcome its residents and visitors to the town.

Miller-Driscoll School had a visit on April 26 by Lizzy Rockwell, the Fairfield County author of The All Together Quilt. Her story is inspired by the Norwalk Community Quilt Project. Miller Driscoll Pre-K through second-grade students each designed a piece of a quilt and students created quilts from the paper drawings.

Local author, Elissa D. Grodin visited Cider Mill School students to talk about her book, N is for Nutmeg. The book highlights Connecticut’s critical role in our nation’s history. N is for Nutmeg engages readers with facts and folklore of Connecticut as well as its history and geography. Learn why Groton is the submarine capital of the world and how Samuel Clemens got his pen name. Grodin visited students in 3rd-5th grades on April 27 and 29. Readers at Cider Mill also engaged with an interactive map of Connecticut on ThingLink. Students will interact with cultural and historic sites, virtual museum visits that all make up Connecticut’s rich history and culture.

Middlebrook Middle School students welcomed renowned poet Marilyn Nelson on April 14. Nelson is a three-time finalist for a national book award as well as an award-winning poet including the 1998 Poet’s Prize and the 2017 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. She is the author of several collections of poetry. Her poem Weir Farm was inspired by the National Historical Park located right in our own backyard. Her appearance is made possible through a generous grant from the Middlebrook PTA.

Through an exploration of poetry, students will have the opportunity to participate in Poetry Month activities including submissions to The Muse, Middlebrook’s own literary magazine, and the Wilton Library. Students will also take part in Poem in my Pocket Day, a day where each member of the Middlebrook community will be handed a poem in the morning to share throughout the day.

The Wilton High School Library Learning Commons will be collaborating with the Smithsonian Virtual Museum with three virtual visits led by museum educators — “Living in Native New York,” “Remaining Native Art,” and “Powerful Images and Powerful Words” are the virtual visits that will focus their instruction on indigenous peoples’ ‘communities” in the Northeastern portions of the United States. The visits will also have students consider the historical and cultural identities of the indigenous people.

In conjunction with the virtual museum visits, Ms. Hughes’s drawing classes at WHS will be creating original art inspired by passages from Eric Gansworth’s memoir, Apple Skin to the Core. The student art was displayed in the WHS LLC during the week of the WHS Festival, April 11-14.

Additionally, Wilton High School Digital Video students are creating a documentary based on Russell’s book, Wilton Connecticut: Three Centuries of People, Places and Progress with video footage from across Wilton including snapshots of Wilton Historical Society, Ambler Farm, Weir Farm and more.

Wilton Public Schools’ programming for Wilton Reads ranges in literary and creative visits and activities that centralize the uniqueness of our community and its residents.