D146’s Memorial School- “One School, One Book”

Memorial School, once again, participated in a program called "One School, One Book", where the entire school community read the same book at the same time. The program, used to help promote school togetherness and family-bonding time, encourages students, their families, and staff to read the same book together, at timed intervals. 

Mr. Mike Donovan, Principal of Memorial School, said, “It is a wonderful program.  Mrs. Corrao and Mrs. Smith did a great job and made it very interesting for the students. The District covered the cost for all of the books so that every student, their families and staff members each were ensured a book. This program was purely positive, and families loved it.” 

Media Center Director, Mrs. Tracy Corrao, said, “This year, we chose the book The World According to Humphrey" by Betty Birney.  Told through the eyes of the main character, this book is about a hamster named Humphrey who is a classroom pet.  Throughout the book, Humphrey performs Random Acts of Kindness for many of the people in the school community, including some of the students, custodian, teacher, and even the principal. It’s a fun book and our feedback has been positive.” 

Mrs. Corrao explained that all students from Early Learning through 5th grade were asked to read the book, with parents and/or older siblings reading to the younger children.  Mrs. Corrao said, “The emphasis of this activity was placed not only on the importance of reading and comprehension, but how reading can bring people together.  One School, One Book says it all.” 

To encourage the students to keep up with the assigned chapters, they were asked trivia questions during morning announcements that served as a springboard to classroom discussions about the previous day's reading assignment.  Parents were also strongly encouraged to participate and read the book in accordance with the school’s set time schedule.  

Classrooms worked together on creating book-related trivia questions and submitted them to the Media Center.  Those classroom-created trivia questions were used during the culminating "Battle of the Book" assembly that took place at the end of February.  Additionally the P.E. teacher set up an obstacle course in the gym as the book started to come to a close.  

Memorial School’s Reading Specialist, Mrs. Michelle Smith said, “At the end of February we had a game-show type trivia contest of students vs. staff.  Our school’s Reading Night was also all about Humphrey!” 

To add to the excitement, Memorial School has a real-life Humphrey.  Mrs. Corrao said, “Our Humphrey was introduced to the students at the Kick-off Assembly and had been traveling from classroom to classroom during our One School, One Book program (in his cage, of course).  At the end of each school day, the classroom that hosted Humphrey wrote an entry in Humphrey's journal (from his point of view), telling about all of the exciting things he did and learned about while in their classroom that day.” 

The hard work that went into this program by Mrs. Corrao and Mrs. Smith and the dedication by students, families and staff made this program “One School , One Book”… one success.