Community literacy program One District One Book is underway. On Friday, children in grades K-6 will each receive a copy of the award-winning children’s book, “The World According to Ivan,” to take home and keep.
Creators of One District One Book write, “The simple premise of the program is ‘to teach families how to fish.’” Simply handing a child a book is not enough.
The saying is well known: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” And you won’t have to keep coming up with extra fish for someone else’s family.
Educators want families to learn how to unplug and get into a good book. So the books are coming home, and parents are asked to read “The One and Only Ivan” with their kids. Studies show that reading to young children helps them develop; it improves their performance in school as well as their behavior.
One District One Book creators call their program a game changer. “Can you imagine the elementary school families in an entire city reading the same chapter book at the same time for an entire month? Can you imagine students – long exposed to little more than television slang and abbreviated, ungrammatical common speech – finally hearing and listening to full English sentences, rich with vocabulary – all through the entertaining, engaging medium of a novel – a great story? Can you imagine any of those families going back for more – making it a habit to read together as a family while their children are in school? That’s the reason, right there. That vision.”
Great Bend USD 428’s One District One Book committee, underwriters in the community and the school administration are onto a good thing here.