Chardon Middle School, which launched its annual One School One Book event at the start of the 2019-20 school year, concluded the annual school-wide endeavor with a fun and interactive team day on Sept. 20 for all students.
OSOB Team Day
Chardon Middle School, which launched its annual One School One Book event at the start of the 2019-20 school year, concluded the annual school-wide endeavor with a fun and interactive team day on Sept. 20 for all students.
One School One Book is a nationwide program that is intended to boost literacy and promote a sense of community. All students and staff members read one chosen book for the school over the course of weeks, intermixed with interactive book discussions and other fun events revolving around the story.
The school’s selected book for 2019-20, “Rules” by author Cynthia Lord, centers around a 12-year-old girl named Catherine who is struggling with the developmental stage of longing for acceptance while working to figure out what matters most. Catherine has a brother David who has special needs due to autism and requires close watching. Despite her love for David, she is also challenged by the attention he requires. In the course of the story, Catherine meets a new friend who is a parapalegic all the while Catherine also makes friends with a girl who she believes can raise her social status. “Rules” follows Catherine’s maturing journey in her relationships with her brother and new friends as she becomes clear about her own self, her values and the people she loves most.
Each chapter of the book begins with a different rule Catherine has for her brother David. Since one of those rules is “No toys in the fish tank,” the book cover features an illustration of a rubber duck in a fish tank. To kick off One School One Book with extra excitement, Chardon Middle School students who gave examples of being solution focused on a selected day at the start of the OSOB program back in August were each rewarded with a live goldfish to bring home after school.
The fun continued throughout the One School One Book journey, including on the final day, Sept. 20, when all middle school students joined together outdoors for team day. Mother Nature provided perfect late summer weather for students to enjoy the outdoor event as they worked together and rotated from station to station.
In the opening group activity, students were faced with the fun challenge of lining up in order by birthdays while refraining from the use of verbal language. Subsequent activity stations broke the students out into smaller, workable groups and included focus ring, human knot, all aboard, grid maze and pipeline. These team-building activities encouraged students to employ such soft skills as cooperation, trust, consideration of others, group communication, patience and problem solving. For example, the goal of focus ring was for students to work together using connected strings to move a ball onto a cone without letting it fall to the ground.
Discussion questions followed each activity, including asking the students how they feel their team communicated during the activity, what went well and what aspects were frustrating. Post-activity discussions also encouraged students to reflect on what must happen in order for a group to succeed with the particular activity, including recognition that when a group works together to complete a task, the impact each person has is huge.
In line with the virtues highlighted by this year’s OSOB program, Chardon Middle School has a “CMS” acrostic that describes the school as Caring, Mindful and Solution-focused. This playful poem is designed to help students remember that the school’s goals include academic success for all, respect, working together/supporting each other, and communicating respectfully when there are differences.
Students Study Mexican-American Life
Chardon High School teacher Carrie Korenke’s Spanish V class, Spanish Summit, is currently reading “La Casa en Mango Street,” a novel by Sandra Cisneros about a Mexican-American girl growing up in a poor neighborhood of Chicago in the 1960s. Ms. Korenke’s class has been studying what had been going on at that time for Mexican-Americans and their daily struggles, including poverty and the fight for equal education and workers’ rights.
The high school students have been working in groups – each responsible for a select chapter of the book to share with the class however they choose. For example, the group comprised of students Jake Hamulak, Jonah Zeiger and Ryan Bluemmel recently read to the class, provided a Google slide presentation and supplied the class with a creative handout illustrating the main points of the chapter.
