2006-2007 Fall/Winter Directions - Friends' Central School

FEATURES – CURRENT STUDENTS
Teaching Each Other in Book Buddies
As Friends’ Central students benefit from an abundance of good teaching, they are also encouraged to become
good teachers themselves. Programs such as the Writing Lab, peer mentoring, and even many of the clubs offer
students a chance to learn from and teach each other. One of the longest running of these programs is “Book
Buddies.”
Imagine twenty first graders in a classroom with
their math books open to the page above. Hmmm, let’s
see, “Measure the length of the bookcase in fathoms. Measure
the length of the cubby room in paces and the length of your
work table in hand spans.” Don’t forget about the cubits and digits!
Now picture their two teachers trying to explain these
instructions to the roomful of six and seven year olds, help the
children measure, maintain some order, and verify (within reason)
the 160 results produced, all within a thirty minute period.
The solution? Save this math page to do with...Book Buddies.
(There should be a blare of trumpets here!)
Although no one seems to know for sure when Book Buddies
started at Friends’ Central School, the consensus is that it began
sometime in the early 1970s and may have been the brainstorm
of Jane McGee, a first-grade teacher, who was seeking more
opportunities for her students to read one-on-one with a good
reader. As a corollary, some say the program began as an opportunity
for the older children, regardless of their relative skills, to
realize what competent readers they had become and provide a
safe way for them to practice, demonstrate, and take pride in the
skills they had acquired. All agree that the program was and is a
48 DIRECTIONS Fall 2006 / Winter 2007
Caroline Satalof ’11 and Melina Daniilidis ’20
way to have children of different ages work on language arts and
other skills in a friendly environment laced with the excitement
of mingling with “unknown” people from the FCS community.
Regardless of its origins, Book Buddies has thrived and metamorphosed
into a tradition in which older children now regularly
help to teach, and learn from, younger ones. In many ways the
term is now used as a catchword for groups of students of different
ages working together on projects ranging from reading, to
math, to psychology, to building projects, to arts and crafts, to
service. Today, the entire fifth grade serves as Book Buddies to
the first grade, meeting once a week from early in the school year
until Winter Break. For the rest of the year, the opportunity to
be a first-grade Book Buddy is available as a service project
choice to all Middle School students.
Fourth graders also serve as weekly Book Buddies to kindergarten
students, where last year, in one classroom, they helped to
fasten the support ropes for a 15-foot replica of the Brooklyn
Bridge, as well as make milk-carton cars to cross it. The annual
highlight of this program, however, is probably a semiautobiographical
book about the younger child written and illustrated by
the older one. I still remember my daughter, who never shared