One Book, One School, One Community

A fun schoolwide collaboration that was once a yearly tradition pre-Covid. For this project, one book is selected for the entire student body to read and study. The book must serve kindergartners and fifth graders equally therefore, a picture book is selected with a subject that can be researched and studied in depth. Each classroom teacher teaches the book in alignment with curricular goals and objectives. Grade levels will collaborate and often work with arts specialists to structure a variety of classroom projects and presentations. The arts specialists will work with students to produce a culminating multi-media, multi-arts (theater, dance, music, visual art, orchestra, and band) experience that is created and performed by many students. The school community attends the Powell OBOSOC Living Museum and Fair as a culminating event allowing students to share their work through publications, presentations and performances. Additionally, we are often able to integrate a visiting artist into both the process and the production.  

Past selections have included Martin’s Big Words, So You Want to Be President, When Marion Sang, Lou Gherig; The Luckiest Man, The Great Kapok Tree, Yesterday I had the Blues, Henry’s Freedom Box, and Listen to the Wind, and Eleanor; Quiet No More, and Butterfly Eyes; and Other Secrets of the Meadow.

An important aspect of this project has been that every family at Powell receives a book to take home to include in their home library. By the end of the culminating performance, the books have taken on real meaning to the students, and children read them over and over again. Often, it is one important book that transforms a child from a non-reader into a life-long reader.

Check out our Third Graders performing live with Shana Tucker at NCSU in 2020 after creating a song together in a Song Writing Artist Residency at Powell:

Give Bees a Chance Project at NCSU

(inspired by the book, Give Bees a Chance by Bethany Barton)