For Summertime Reading, Look for the Perkins “Book Sheds”
Students at Perkins Elementary School put the finishing touches on one of six “book sheds” they created for the neighborhood.
Students may have closed up their textbooks for the school year, but summertime is a great time for leisure reading. And even though schools will be closed there will be more libraries open around Des Moines thanks to a bibliographic bunch of 5th graders at Perkins Elementary.
“It’s pretty remarkable what her kids accomplished,” principal Dan Koss said as he escorted visitors to the classroom of teacher Rochelle Douglass.
Forty-two days ago Douglass and her students started designing and building six “book sheds,” they’re calling them, modeled after the Little Free Libraries scattered around town, one of which will be placed right in the school’s front yard.
It’s the latest example of the transition to a project-based learning model in Douglass’s class. Already this year her industrious students had raised some $4,000 in donations to three community nonprofit agencies: Furry Friends, the Animal Rescue League and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. And then Koss suggested building a storage shed on the school grounds.
“I told him I was up for something more hands-on,” said the peppy Douglass, “but maybe not quite THAT hands-on.”
So the project was scaled-down in size but up in number. Book sheds sounded perfect, one per small group of about five students. What happened next depends on which of four self-appointed class spokespersons you listen to. All of them were eager to talk about their class’s efforts on behalf of community literacy.
Ayden Harris, Lucy Auge, Lauren Hall and Arianna Jackson and their classmates had to arrange for public placements of the finished products. One will go to the Science Center of Iowa. Another is promised to Snookie’s, the popular ice cream shop in the Perkins neighborhood. Taste! To Go Catering, another area business, said they’d take one, too. The others will be installed on private properties, including Arianna’s grandmother’s yard. All six are decorated in themes consistent with their locations. The one designated for the school’s lawn copies the building’s red brick look, for instance.
The two private branches of the Perkins library were raffled off at the school’s recent annual carnival. Students pitched that idea to the PTA and also solicited the businesses that signed on for the other three. And donations of inventory for the handmade, outdoor bookshelves had to be secured so they won’t sit empty once they’re finished. So there was more to it than hammers and nails and paint brushes. Like 5th graders and their teachers don’t have enough to do anyway coming down the stretch of a big year!
Biztown, “graduation” to middle school, the carnival and the school Olympics – aye yai yai!
“We should have started earlier,” Lauren said with everybody, including Douglass, nodding in vigorous agreement.
“But it was fun,” Lucy made clear. More nods.
“Next year I think we’ll need to…” Douglass started to say before she was interrupted. Next year? So this is now an annual thing? She smiled. “I don’t know if it will be book sheds or not. But yes, there will be some kind of a big project.” It’s an idea she can’t put down.
Meantime, there’s talk of a book club forming over the summer with weekly meetings in the Adirondack chairs outside a Beaverdale ice creamery.
How does Snookie’s Bookies sound?
