Tohickon 5/06

BookPals Culminating Activity

May 17, 2006

Tohickon Middle School, Bucks County

visits

Roberto Clemente Middle School, North Philadelphia

For the third year, students from Tohickon and Clemente participated in BookPals. Students at Tohickon Middle School earned money to purchase enough books, selected by Clemente teachers, for three classes of Clemente students and four classes of Tohickon students to read together. The students from the two schools then wrote to one another about their lives and the books that they were reading. This year's book selections included a series of ghost books written by Allen Zullo, The Buried City of Pompeii by Shelley Tanaka, and Loser by Jerry Spinelli. These books then became the property of the students who read them, which helped the Clemente students to build their home libraries. In addition, as evidenced in the photographs below, the Tohickon students brought many more books with them to give to the Clemente students at the culminating activity. Therefore, each participating Clemente student received about eight gift books from the Tohickon students. More than 700 books were purchased for the program this year.

BookPals was originally conceived and implemented by two students at Tohickon, who have remained involved with the program even though they have moved on to high school. See <http://libraries.phila.k12.pa.us/clemente/bookpals2.html> The teachers collaborating on the year long project included Ms. Amy Fry and Profe Michael Donnelly from Tohickon, wth the help of Mrs. Kathleen Krupa, a parent, and Mr. John Skari, principal. The Clemente teachers included Mrs. Annette Cianfrini, Mrs. Karen Martino, Mrs. Evelyn Rosen, Mrs. Victoria Velazquez, and Mrs. Carol Heinsdorf; Ms. Pat Mazzuca, principal. Mrs. Marion McGovern is a counselor at Clemente. It was through her husband, Dr. Jack McGovern, an adminsitrator in the Bucks County I.U., that the original connection was made between the two schools.

The Clemente School family is very grateful for the time and effort expended by the Tohickon School family to help our students become enthusiastic readers.

Shown with Clemente students are some of the titles purchased by Tohickon Middle School students.
Students at each school read and wrote to one another about the books.