YARI Award Part 2: Essay
by Liz Friend, Wester Middle School, Frisco ISD
In December 2014, SONNENBLITZ! debuted at Wester Middle School. The purpose was to introduce our 900 students to Jordan Sonnenblick, one of the best authors writing for middle school today. Our literacy team, which consisted of five teachers, led by me and funded by the Wester PTO, decided on the author in spring of 2014; over the summer, committee members read several of Sonnenblick’s books in order to come up with plans for activities, trivia questions, and ideas for desired outcomes. The main focus was to encourage a love of reading--including the strange notion that students can actually read FOR FUN, not just the stuff related to assignments at school…! Sonnenblick’s books are ideal for this purpose, as they deal with real-life issues and have characters with whom both boys and girls identify. (Finding an author who appeals to both genders is a tougher job than it might appear!) The five books highlighted by our program included Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, After Ever After, Zen and the Art of Faking It, Notes from the Midnight Driver, and Curveball.
When school started in the fall, the committee set up a slate of activities corresponding with themes or events in the various books. We devised a competition that pitted each of the school’s academic teams (there are six; two in each grade) to see which one could read the highest number of pages and thus win the 10,000-Page Challenge. All teams were required to finish a minimum of 10,000 pages in order to qualify for a movie afternoon on the final day of school before Winter Break (no coercion necessary—if the team didn’t finish, they would just end up doing regular school stuff while everyone else kicked back: motivation enough!); the top three highest-scoring teams would also receive food prizes to enjoy during the movie. So--how hard was it for a team to meet the challenge? For the average team of 150 students to reach the goal, each kid would need to read an average of 67 pages. It turned out that even after each team completed the 10,000-page minimum, the kids kept reading like crazy in order to score the food prizes.
We kept track of the “mileage” (page totals) by having gnomes named for each team riding bikes and circling a large track—nods to themes in two of the “Sonnen-books”. Updates were posted each day, with teams changing the lead frequently.
Each language arts teacher received 24 books, paid for by our PTO, which included an assortment of the five titles to keep in the classroom so students could use them for SSR time. Additionally, we borrowed 50 copies of the various books from other schools, which kids could check out if they wanted to read at home. We offered a slate of activities in which students could participate whether or not they chose to read one of the books—although of course, we hoped their participation would encourage them to read! These activities included: an opening “Virtual Assembly” where our Broadcast team wrote, performed, filmed and edited a group of skits and then combined them with book trailers to introduce everyone to the program; the “Drumline Beatdown”, which showcased talented drummers from Centennial and Independence High Schools, the schools into which Wester students eventually feed; “Sonnenblick Selfies”, where students submitted selfie pictures starring themselves with themes or items from Sonnenblick books; a bubble-blowing contest; “Drink, Drive, Die!” featuring our school resource officer, who talked about the dangers of mixing alcohol and autos; and the anxiously-awaited “Dangerous Pie-Eating Contest”.
In addition to weekly activities, students who finished a book were able to take the Trivia Challenge and claim a prize; there was also a daily trivia question on the announcements--with edible prizes--and every student who attended an activity got a ticket for one of several grab-bag awards raffled off at the end of the competition. The favorite prize, hands down, was the candy-and-soda combination (neither is available for sale on campus). Eat that at lunch to show your friends reading is cool!
For the movie afternoon, we watched Gnomeo and Juliet, which is a thematic tie-in to Notes from the Midnight Driver. The scheduling involved shortened classes all day, and a 90-minute movie slot held in homeroom classes. Teachers especially appreciated this, as the final Friday before the break can be kind of a…challenge.
Reflections: I was almost surprised at the excitement generated by this program! Wester has some sort of book program every year, but we’ve never had the kind of response generated by this one. I think it was a combination of books that were “just right” for our population; a couple of ringleaders among the kids who were openly vowing to read/bragging about having read every single book, and the opportunity to win a prize everyone thought was pretty sweet. (Teachers kept asking if they could qualify!) At the end of the tallying, our students had read a total of over 200,000 pages--an all-time high for Wester MS.
I was particularly surprised by how many students actually read ALL of the Sonnenblick books. Granted, they’re short, and generally a fast read, but I don’t think that would have been enough if the books themselves hadn’t engaged them. It’s important for teens to realize that not only can books comment on people who have problems similar to their own, but that they shed light on what other people might do in a situation the student him/herself might not have considered. It’s not often that we have kids coming into the library asking for realistic fiction—even though they call it “other books like those Sonnenblick ones”--but there’s an all-new interest in contemporary fiction as a result of the Sonnenblitz program here at Wester, and hopefully a renewed interest in reading that will last these teens a lifetime.
YARI Award Part III: Supporting Materials
Liz Friend, Wester Middle School, Frisco ISD
While I have lots of random documents that I could send, a picture is worth 1000 words! Please check out the following YouTube videos:
Sonnenblitz! (a look at our total book program)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSca9t9nv3c&feature=em-upload_owner
Book trailers I created for the five Sonnenblick books:
After Ever After:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nifbGTTRemw
Curveball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh4OxtfPM4s
Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ld0zUpDrw
Notes from the Midnight Driver:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR9gCzrdsd0
Zen and the Art of Faking It:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXW-7O-1IhI