By Christopher Harris
Coordinator, School Library System
Genesee Valley BOCES

Like many other districts around the state, the middle school students in the Alexander school district in rural Western New York tend to have lower test scores when compared to elementary and high school students in the same district. This is the story of how web-based resources – Library 2.0 – are playing a role in improving academic achievement in the 1,000-student district.

 After the district was identified as one that could benefit from extra support, I began working on a plan with Special Education Training and Resource Center (SERTC) coordinator Jacqueline Czamanske and Alexander Middle/High principal Kitty Maerten.

The idea was simple: re-introduce reading to students as a social activity.

How to do that in an appealing way? We chose to create an online space that imitated aspects of popular social networking website like Facebook and MySpace. We built a book review site using a powerful open source content management system called Drupal.

We imagined a jazzed-up home for student-written summaries of books and reviews. There would be lots of interactive opportunities, such as the ability to rate books using a five-star system.

We tried it with sixth-graders first. About 60 students ended up submitting almost 500 book reviews! While some teachers adopted the book review site and used it for a class assignment as a way to track students’ progress towards reading their required 25 books, most of the reviews came from students who just loved using the new system.

Notably, 100 percent of the students with disabilities met VESID benchmarks for performance on the sixth-grade English language arts exam.

What made this project successful? One of the biggest factors for success was the librarian at Alexander, Kristie Miller. In addition to the book review site, Miller developed a reward and recognition system that highlighted successful readers and reviewers. Based on reading habits, students could participate in a bi-weekly button ceremony.

In the same way that rituals have special significance in reality TV shows, the library’s button ceremonies took on special meaning in Alexander. Small, homemade buttons with yellow and green geometric shapes became the most desirable objects in the school.

Based on Alexander’s success, other schools in Western New York are using the web-based social networking approach to encourage reading.