Renée Susman, librarian at East Lake Elementary School in the Massapequa School District, knows that people will be thinking about food as Thanksgiving approaches, but she also wants them thinking about books. Susman launched her
Gobble Up a Good Book initiative, in which has students and staff make reading suggestions.
To involve students in the process and foster cooperation, collaboration and communication, she created a turkey on the bulletin board outside of the library. Each feather is a piece of paper shaped like an open book, and students wrote the names of books they were thankful to have read, along with the author’s name.
In a nearby display case, teachers used the same book-shaped pieces of paper to post the titles of books that they think children should read before they leave elementary school. The school’s youngest students constructed a thankful tree by writing what they are grateful for on hand-shaped leaves.
“This is what East Lake is about; it’s a cooperative effort,” said Susman. “In this building, everyone gets on board and contributes to the learning environment.”
