Little readers, big book club
Norman Wells students are taking to the pages with their families
Elaine Anselmi
Northern News Services
Monday, November 23, 2015
LLI GOLINE
The students of Mackenzie Mountain School have something in common: Fudge.
Also known as two-year-old Farley Hatcher, who along with his older brother Peter are the main characters of Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - a part of the Fudge series that's familiar to many generations.
The children's novel is the first book chosen for the school to take part in the One Book, One School program to promote family literacy. Run by non-profit organization Read To Them, out of the U.S., the program offers a list of books for schools to choose from and provides resources and teaching tools to go along with them.
"Every student in the school gets a copy of a book and brings it home. There's a schedule and parents or older brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, read it aloud to them on schedule each night," said principal Mike Duclos.
At school, Duclos said they ask a trivia questions about the book on the morning announcements and do a number of in-class activities related to the book, supplied by the Read to Me organization.
"The idea and rationale for doing it is just to get families in the community reading with their kids more than they normally do," said Duclos.
The One Book, One School program is in place in schools across the U.S. and in some provinces in Canada, though Duclos said Mackenzie Mountain is the first Canadian territory to sign up. Having ordered 160 copies of the book to provide one for each student, he hopes to see other schools in the territory catch on - possibly offering the opportunity for trading books between schools.
While Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was Duclos' nostalgia-inducing pick, he said the next book choice might go to another staff member or class. Though he said there are a few more classics on the One Book, One School list that he'd like to see the students get into: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and Charlotte's Web among them.
Though the program is geared toward students between kindergarten and Grade 6, Duclos ordered enough books for the older students to also get involved - maybe even get a kick out of re-reading the book from their own childhood.
The schedule, Duclos said, gives families about two nights to get through each chapter. He said the school would be starting on a new book in the new year, as long as things go well with the first round - so far, he said it's all been positive.
"There's a good buzz going around about it," he said.
"I've heard the kids talking about how their parents read to them and they're liking it."
The school's inclusive schooling teacher Kelly Bourque first came across the program while research different options for developing family literacy, something Duclos said is important when addressing literacy among students.
Duclos said, "Literacy is for everyone really and the more we can promote it as a thing that goes beyond he walls of the school, the better we'll be and the more literate our whole community will be."
