One School, One Book at Brentwood

Times Reporter

 

In January students, staff and parents at Brentwood Elementary School took on an interesting challenge. Everyone read the same book in the same time-frame. 

One School, One Book is a program that creates a shared reading experience in elementary schools. When teacher Wendy Hatton heard about it at the teacher’s convention in 2012, she was excited about the idea and brought school librarian Tami Lemoine on board. 

After a few months of reading approximately a dozen books to find the right fit for the school the women settled on ‘Because of Winn Dixie’ by Kate DiCamillo. 

“It was a small enough book that we could manage it, we could get through it within the time line, we wanted to do it in a month, and it was universal, it wasn’t really American, said Lemoine. “It didn’t have a lot of politics, it didn’t have a lot of things in it that could create conflict for families. It was just a really simple, good, funny read.”  

The Cheadle Lions also showed their support of the program, purchasing 250 copies of the book for the Brentwood school families. On Jan. 13 an assembly was held to tell the students about the initiative. At the assembly a couple of the teachers acted out a skit from the book, and that night everyone in the school began reading. Everyone had to read a chapter or two every night at home. 

“This was a home-based project and the idea is to get families connected again through literature and it created a whole community in our school, our little kids were reading with the big kids,” said Lemoine.

There were daily trivia questions, and every class would enter the daily draw where a name would be picked and a prizewinner would be announced. 

Twice a week there was also catch up time at the library during lunch so that any students not getting their reading done at home would be able to do it at the school. 

Lemoine said some really great ideas came out of the One School, One Book initiative, and great discussions about community and what it is like to not have friends, or how to be friends. The fundraising portion of the initiative also helped out the Oops-A-Dazy Pet Rescue and Sanctuary Society. 

“One of the components that really struck us, that we were happy about was that (the initiative) had a give back section. It was a story about a dog but it was also about how the dog helps the family and how the family helps each other,” said Lemoine.

“So we had a Dimes for Dogs program and kids could just bring in their spare change. They don’t want to stop, they’re still bringing in money.”

Jodie Humen is a teacher at Brentwood and a parent. Her family loved the initiative. 

“We loved it in my house, my son is actually asking what we’re doing next year,” said Humen.

“We read to them every night but this gave us just something new to read. It does give parents who don’t generally read to their kids a way in, and maybe then they’ll start doing this more often.”

Siblings Joey, Justin, William Ezekiel and their sister Shailynn LeClair-Hobbs were very involved in the program, answering questions every day on the book. 

“I think it’s cool to have everybody in our school doing the same project. Kindergartners or Grade 1’s have the same chances of reading the book as a Grade 6,” said Shailynn. 

“It was still fun because we got to read the same book.” 

“It was a really good book,” said Justin.

They read it as a family, making sure to read the same chapter as each other so they could talk about it later. The kids made it work even if they weren’t all together at their dad’s house or mom’s house that night. 

Once the school had completed the book, there was another assembly where everyone got to watch the movie together. It was a nice way to end the program. The book has not been decided upon for next year, but it sounds like most of the school is on board with bringing the initiative back.