February
18
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One Book + One School = One Reading Community by Karyn Lewis
As a school librarian I gush over books, I hug books, I smell new books, and I treasure all the stories that come into my life. I became a librarian to share with my students the joy that books bring me. So after 3 years as the librarian in an affluent elementary school, I was saddened as I felt the love of reading was dying in my school community. Parents would say all the right things, teachers encouraged reading at home and at school, students visited the library on a regular basis, and yet something was missing. I knew I needed to find a way to fan the flame and ignite a LOVE of reading once again. Through Twitter I heard of an idea called One Book One School where librarians would share a book with an entire school, and I felt this was the perfect program to get my students and their families reconnected! Many schools used older books, such as Charlotte’s Web or Roald Dahl books, but I felt a newer novel would be a much better match for our community. I turned to Twitter once more, asking for suggestions, to which the response was almost unanimous, and so The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate was selected, and our journey began.
In order to get the message to parents first, I decided to share my idea as part of our back to school Curriculum Night through a short video that every teacher showed in their classrooms. Several parents stopped by the library that night to tell me they were so excited about this program and couldn’t wait to find out what book we would be reading. I had a good feeling that this really was going to work! The very next day I showed the same video to the students and revealed one clue each day over the next week: 1. It is one of Mrs. Lewis’ favorite books! (“Mrs. Lewis has LOTS of favorites, so it could be so many!”) 2. It is a Newbery Award winning book. (“Where are the Newbery books in the library?”) 3. It is a story with animals in it. (“Is it by Kate DiCamillo? Mrs. Holter and Mrs. Lewis love her books and they have animals in them!”) 4. It is a story about friendship. 5. It is based on a true story. (By this time many of my fifth graders had started to figure out it might be Ivan.) 6. It was also on the Texas Bluebonnet list. (“Is it still on the Bluebonnet shelf? Look for the sticker on the books!”) Finally the big day arrived, I pushed my cart full of books around the school, and delivered a book to each and every child.
That is when the magic happened! I saw the twinkle of excitement in students’ eyes as I shared Ivan’s story and gave them their very own copy to keep FOREVER! For days after passing out the books, students would stop and thank me for the Ivan book telling me how much they enjoyed it. They would tell me that they just couldn’t stop reading it and they loved it so much! Over the next six weeks we shared Ivan’s story at school and at home and became closer because of our shared reading experience. Parents would stop me in the hall or lunch room and thank me for giving them the opportunity to read with their 4th or 5th grader again; something they hadn’t done since their children learned how to read by themselves. Students would carry their treasured copy of Ivan around, read it at the lunch table, take it to recess, and talk to each other about the characters in the book. We shared favorite quotes, learned about the real Ivan who inspired the story, tweeted pictures, and even met Katherine Applegate at a local reading festival. We cautiously spoke about the moments that made us laugh, cry, and get angry as we didn’t want to spoil any parts for those who might not be where we were in the book. Our culminating event was a school reading pep rally where 5th grade students developed reading cheers, a teacher dressed as our mascot, classes brought banners to the gym celebration, and we got to Skype with the gorilla zookeeper at our local zoo. My mission was complete. Parents were asking when the next One Book One School program would start. Students were coming to the library to find the next book that was “maybe something like The One and Only Ivan… I really loved that book!” This one book, this one story, this one gorilla, had captured our hearts and reminded us of the tender moments that sharing a story together can create. We started talking about other books we were reading and looking forward to reading. We had found our spark again.
To see our The One and Only Ivan journey through tweets and pictures click here: https://animoto.com/play/1SirwyeKaHC8NxxwKVs35A , and pics from our pep rally: https://t.co/ncvSKYMqJK
Karyn Lewis has worked in public schools for seventeen years, and is currently the librarian at a middle school in Katy, Texas. She has also taught second, third, and fifth grades, and was an elementary librarian for 4 years, including during the #onebookoneschool program. She is passionate about connecting readers to books and authors. You can find her on Twitter as @ktlewis14.
Nerdy Book Club 
Beautiful–love it!!!
Right , books are our true friends
Wonderful article. Thank you for sharing the spark that lit the flame for reading at your school.
Has this been done with at the high school level?
What grades in your school? We are 1-4 school. Where did money come for all the books?? Great idea!
My school was PK-5 with about 525 students.
I used my Scholastic Dollars earned during my book fair. I worked with my rep to get a good price on the books.
Our school read this book together this year. We loved it so much!
I am hoping to start up a One Read at our high school. How was this program funded?
I used my Scholastic Dollars earned through my book fair.
I am at a middle school now. We do a Read it Forward program where I bought about 50 books and spread them throughout outer school. Students are supposed to read the book, sign it, and pay it on to another friend to read. We have the author coming to visit all those who participated in May. (After they read it they also sign up in the library and get a READ lanyard.)
We don’t have book fairs at the high school level, but our public library has a One Read program I might be able to tie in with. I like the idea of paying forward a book read. I can build on that. Thanks for the idea!
We chose The One and Only Ivan for our One School, One Book selection last year. It remains one of my favorites! I love the way that you introduced the book, i.e. the clues.
What grade levels and how was it funded?
I used Scholastic Dollars raised during our book fair the previous year, and worked with my rep to get a good bulk price.
My school is currently in the middle of our fourth One School, One Book event. This year’s book is Fish in a Tree. In the past we’ve read Malcolm at Midnight (author came for a whole school day and evening presentation with parents), The Fairy Tale Detectives, and The Castle in the Attic.
I love it! Such a wonderful book to choose. It is amazing that you were able to see her so close to your school read event. I enjoyed the Animoto video you did. I particularly loved the pictures of the kids and their parents with the book. Keep up the good work!
Wow! You did it! You spread book-love. Inspirational!
Great work all through. Were there any younger kids at your school who might not have an adult available at home to read to them? How did you handle that?
Not that I know of, but heard of many older siblings reading to younger siblings thru it all! The younger graders (PK-1) also had the teacher reading the picture book to them at school.
I love, LOVE this! Just perfect. A good teacher or librarian knows how to light a reading fire. This was one of the best. Bravo! And thank you to Karyn Lewis for making a difference.
Wow! What a wonderful idea. Thanks for sharing 🙂
The private high school where I taught uses One Book/One School for summer reading, beginning about ten years ago. The first year the high school assignments were divided into boys and girls( The Natural; Speak), but later we also used graphic novels, non-fiction, and other more creative works. We used the program for the first week of classes, and although it was difficult to schedule the groups according to each student’s daily English class schedule, the trouble was worth it. The discussions and activities crossed grades and gender.
Reblogged this on iamlifelonglearner and commented:
Beautiful article…igniting the interest in Reading!:)
Fantastic, what an inspired idea and how great that the idea worked in practice too. I’m working in a state school in the UK for 11-16-year-olds and am struggling with the same issues, school focus on reading but hardly any checkouts in the library that aren’t a compulsory text. You’ve got me thinking…..
Karyn, how can I thank you for this beautiful post? It’s the perfect reminder of why we writers so need teachers and librarians to help us connect with readers. I honestly think if I’d participated in a One Book / One School event when I was growing up, I would have become a writer much sooner. Thank you for sharing this.
Hi Karyn, Great going!!! There is so much to do with books!!! Fostering a good reading culture is the beginning towards inculcating good life long reading habits. We have recently completed a year-long reading program with the same concept of One Book One School for our Grade 1 students. We divided the program into two parts. During the first term of the year we involved parents and shared a lot of articles and web links on developing good reading strategies to help them in learning to read aloud to their children effectively. We also conducted a reading workshop for the parents and shared with them the classwork on Reading using Google Classroom. In the second term we introduced a novel study on “Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams which involved five weeks of read aloud sessions on weekends by parents to their children whereas the teachers conducted comprehension based activities in classrooms through the week based on the read aloud session of that weekend. A project book of all classwork was compiled for each child. The program ended in a lovely 3 D display of the scenes from the novel.The program was guided by the school. It introduced many approaches to developing literacy which helped in cultivating love for reading. We plan to continue this program as part of our Reading Curriculum.
Reblogged this on Notes from An Alien and commented:
Great story in today’s re-blog—be sure to take a look at the linked video 🙂