Collaborating with Public Schools to Encourage Childhood Reading

Every year the Pennsylvania Highlands Community College Library works with local schools on our One Book One Community reading program. We pick a book aimed at 4th to 6th grade readers that is set in a historic period. This way, students can learn some history while engaged with a fun story. We’ve done books set during WWII, the American Civil War, the Great Depression, and many others. After the book is selected, we send copies to local schools so that teachers can read the book with their students and develop lesson plans around it. At the end of the school year, these schools visit our college for a day of fun activities and a lecture by the author. Our faculty use their subject expertise to help us come up with fun and educational things for students to do. This year, our book is about dinosaurs, so we’ll have activities where students identify different types of dinosaurs, excavate dinosaur toys, and even get to talk with a real paleontologist from a local college. Our event has become so popular that we now get well over 1000 students each year. To support the event, we have a large list of volunteers who help run the event. We gather donations from members of the community. Our College also provides financial support for our OBOC program. Many children who attended our OBOC program in grade school eventually enroll in college at Penn Highlands with good memories from their time here as kids. It also helps us grow a positive relationship with local schools and teachers.

If you have questions about how we make all this work, please reach out to me at akirby@pennhighlands.edu