THank you to everyone who e-mailed back. I now have a lot of great ideas, if there
are more out there... the more the better!!! Please keep sending !
We are in the midst of this program right now. In fact, I sent out a
call, too, for info on it! We funded 1/2 of our books through a PTA
donation, and the other 1/2 came from my library budget. While I
normally would not be able to justify this amount, I am a new member of
the Texas Lone Star Committee (which picks our state books for the
middle school kids) and so publishers are sending me free books out the
wazoo right now, which I then donate to my library. Our district picked
the author for our fist author visit, so I chose a book of his (Ben
Mikaelsen's Touching Spirit Bear).
As time marches on and I have a better clue as to how things are going
I'll keep you posted!
n our school when we did this, I received a local grant of $5000 which allowed me
to purchase enough books to sell everyone (staff included) at a very reduced cost.
For our free waiver students, we gave them their books. Instead of celebrating
Teen Read Week, we declared October Teen Read One Book One School Month. I
collected teaching activities for each of the core academic subjects that would
relate in some way to the book, but it was at the teachers' discretions to use what
worked for them. Many of them did this or created activities of their own.
The book we used was Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I read it and
loved it and felt certain it would be equally popular with boys and girls. Further
points that I found appealing were that it's relatively short, it's well written,
and it's the first book in a series so I felt sure it would hook kids to read the
remaining books on their own. I then asked some of the teachers to read the book
to see if they agreed that it would be a good choice. Everyone was in agreement
that it would work. I enlisted our GSIA (our version of PTA) to help with book
sales before and after school as well as during lunch. The teachers emailed me the
lists of students who were on fee waiver, and I took those books to the teachers to
distribute. One of the really fulfilling experiences that we had involved our
custodian. He is a WONDERFUL man who is a fabulous mentor for our students. Due
to a learning disability, he reads well below the grade
level of this book, and I really wanted him to be able to participate. We bought
the audio book for him, and he played it as he worked around the school.
As our culminating event, I used the remainder of the grant funds to bring the
author, Margaret Peterson Haddix to our school. She spoke to each grade level and
then answered questions about the Shadow Children series that our students had
prepared before her visit. Again our GSIA reps were here to sell copies of the
other books in the series. Mrs. Haddix autographed EVERY book and spoke a kind
word to each student. The event was an overwhelming success. The books in that
series are still always at the top of the monthly circulation list for our library.
See: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/03/04/news/local/news05.txt
for what one school did with the book Hoot.
We bought one book for each of our teachers. We read 5 pages each
period at the beginning of the period except one a day which was rotated
each day...during that period we did different activities pertaining to
the 15 pages that were read the previously. Sometimes it was reflect
and sometime it was with discuss.
I did a wiki for our One Book program in Oct. 2006. See the side bar for all my
handouts, etc. It is:
OneBookOneSchool.pbwiki.com
We have our second one coming up in April and we have expanded to include another
school. We will have about 900 readers and will have author visit one day in each
building. This year we are reading Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salisbury.
If you have any questions after looking at the wiki, feel free to contact me. It
is truly a powerful experience and I wish you the best of luck.
Hi Laura - We did it last year for the first time around the theme of
bullying. We chose the book The Revealers by Doug Wilhelm. My principal
found the money in her activity account to buy one book for each homeroom
teacher. We read over the month of November. I created a schedule of how
much to read each day, and discussion questions for each day. The reading
was done during an academic block. This created a problem for some
teachers (losing class time) so we let each grade level decide when during
the day it would be read. We set aside 20 minutes per day. I don't think
in reality there was a lot of time for discussion. We had the author visit
after we were done reading. We are trying to make kids aware of bullying
behaviors. We did a pre-reading survey to see what they thought bullying
was, and to say if they'd been bullied or had bullied. The results were
compiled and were surprising. As we were finishing the book we had each
student write on a strip of paper something they could do to stop
bullying, then we took the strip and made chains for each homeroom. "Break
the chain of bullying" was what they represented. The chains hung over
each doorway. The author visit was good too - again the principal found $
for it. Each student had to write something to him - either something they
learned, a question or observation. We took these and made them into a
scrapbook for him. We are doing it again this year with the book Payback
by James Heneghan. We now have an Advisory period during the day, so that
is when the reading is going to be done, not during academic time.
Hopefully this will be more effective. The author is going to visit again
this year too.
Good luck - it didn't solve bullying, but did bring an awareness of it to
everyone at school at the same time.
Laura Pleune
Media Specialist
Greenville Middle School
1321 Chase
Greenville, MI 48838
616-225-1000 ext. 8359 or 8360
Fax 616-754-2901
pleunel@greenville.k12.mi.us
http://www.greenville.k12.mi.us/webpages/pleunel/
Baldwin Heights Elem.
Cedar Crest Elem.
Lincoln Heights Elem.
Walnut Hills Elem.
http://www.greenville.k12.mi.us/webpages/mcenter/index.cfm
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