GOING FOR THE GOLD

Going for the Gold is a three-month thematic program that introduces second grade students at Franklin Elementary School to over forty award-winning Caldecott books, and culminates with the Caldecott Bowl Tournament. 

The program’s rich collection of literature expands students’ experiences across the curriculum and honors multicultural diversity.  After reading various Caldecott books, students dramatize, discuss, recreate, sing, conduct interviews, retell, and write about events in the stories.  Students’ writing skills are enhanced as they can compose original sequels for stories, write letters to authors and illustrators, and create poetry based on the themes of stories.  Students also engage in various art activities after viewing illustrations from books. 

The culminating activity of Going for the Gold  is the Caldecott Bowl Tournament (played much like Jeopardy) in which each class participates.  Categories of questions include Authors and Illustrators, Plots, Characters, Settings, and Quotations.  All questions come from the Caldecott books that are read throughout the year.  The questions in each category have point values ranging form 10 to 50, based on level of difficulty.  The class with the most points is the Caldecott Bowl Champion for the year.  Their class is presented with a trophy and with medals. 

Franklin School’s second grade teaching team, which includes, Margaret Conway, Donna Esposito, Cathy Freund, and Joy Vanderhoof implement this program.  Media Specialist, Janet Hawthorne and Reading Specialist, Leslie Fisher also helps in the implementation of the Caldecott Bowl Tournament. 

As students read over forty books, they gain a sense of accomplishment and pride, and increase their reading and writing skills.  The program addresses numerous New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards in Language Arts Literacy. 

Going for the Gold  has been implemented successfully into the second grade at Franklin Elementary for the past thirteen years.  The children are eagerly anticipating this event, which is scheduled for April 5^th and 7^th.