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Md. students join worldwide effort to break record
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(Arianne Starnes Teeple/ For The Baltimore Examiner)
Howard County Executive Ken Ulman claps with second-graders Showe Liou, 7, left, and Zain Mannan, 7, right, both of Columbia, after jointly reading aloud a passage from “Charlotte’s Web” with more than 60 other children and teachers at Longfellow Elementary School in Columbia, in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people reading aloud in separate locations. Local students participated in an effort to break the world record for the most people reading aloud simultaneously in multiple locations. “I always wanted to be famous for something,” said Phillip Queen, 10, of Annapolis, who read with his fifth-grade class at Eastport Elementary. About 5,700 Maryland students read a passage from “Charlotte’s Web” at noon on Wednesday. The students read during a portion of their lunch break in order to compete. Their counterparts in California were reading at the same time, although it was 9 a.m. on the West Coast. Worldwide, about 550,000 students participated in the Guinness World Records event. Each participating school was required to fill out a form containing signatures from students and witnesses. The record will be certified by Guinness World Records in early 2007. Students read an excerpt that illustrates Wilbur the pig’s surprise when he meets Charlotte the spider. Charlotte teaches Wilbur about the greeting “Salutations.” “The whole passage deals with accepting other people. Wilbur accepted the spider for being a spider,” said Steven Soly, a fifth-grade teacher at Easton Elementary School. The event was organized by Walden Media, the production company who created the film version of “Charlotte’s Web”. The movie, which stars Julia Roberts, Dakota Fanning and Robert Redford, will open Dec. 15. The current record is held by about 150,000 students from the United Kingdom who read William Wordsworth’s poem “Daffodils” in 2004, according to Walden Media. Around the Baltimore metropolitan area, public, private and home-schooled students in Annapolis, Baltimore, Laurel, Columbia, Glen Burnie, Fort Meade, Finksburg, Sykesville and Ellicott City participated. |
