Posted by Michelle Drucker on Jun 09, 2016
This School's One Book Program Is Making Waves
Eli Whitney Elementary School chooses "Escaping the Giant Wave" for their 2016 One Book Program.
This year, Eli Whitney Elementary hosted their one book program for the third year in a row. The goal of the program was to provide common ground for everyone to relate to by putting a book in the hand of every student and employee at the school. This year, the committee chose Escaping the Giant Wave, thanks to a suggestion from one of the school's third-grade teachers. In the past, they read Lemonade Wars and Frindle.
In order to raise money to pay for the books, the school held its first annual Read-A-Thon where students collected donations of any amount large or small in order to participate. Then for an hour and a half on a Friday afternoon, participants packed the gym, the cafeteria, and the hallways to read together. Together, they raised a whopping $1,700!
As students completed their reading assignments throughout the month of May, the school hosted a series of activities centered around the book (such as trivia, a game night, and a treasure hunt) that culminated in a final school-wide assembly. This year, they had a very special surprise guest — a local meteorologist — come give a presentation to the entire school.
As a final project, students built survival kits for the main characters of the book. The top 20 kits got to participate in a special meet and greet with Mike Cameron, the meteorologist for WFSB 3 Connecticut.
Thank you to the school's language arts consultant, Rebecca Gihuly, for sharing this amazing story with us!
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This post was written by Michelle Drucker, the manager of marketing at BookPal. She is currently reading Making Work Work by Shola Richards and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.