School-Wide Project has Domino Effect on Reading

A school-wide experiment at Cherokee Elementary doubled as one of the longest displays of “dominos” on record and an opportunity to get students excited about reading. 

Cherokee students emerged from their classrooms to watch a semester’s worth of hard work and planning literally fall into place. During the school’s unique “super special” - a seventh section in their rotation of specials that often merges multiple disciplines -  all 800-plus students at Cherokee transformed an empty cereal box into their favorite book cover. 

“The idea was simply to get them talking about their favorite books and thinking about new books they haven’t read yet,” said Shelly Jerome, the Cherokee teacher who kicked off the project in September to align with National Literacy Month. 

Students were challenged to reinvision their book cover and also write a “hook,” or brief synopsis on the back cover. Both aspects encouraged creativity and reinforced reading and writing skills shared across all grade levels, a staple of most “super special” activities. She mentioned that the project even spawned some conversations about recycling, given the choice to use empty cereal boxes as the dominos.

On the day of the project’s eclipse, students were tasked with lining up their “books” in a designated spot along the full domino route, which snaked from the fifth and sixth grade hallways upstairs to the third and fourth grade wings downstairs. Students squealed as the falling “dominos” reached their corner of the school. 

“Activities like this that involve every single Cheetah student really have a way of bringing our school community together,” reflected Cherokee Principal Valerie Montgomery. “It was a fun way to celebrate this project and all of our hard work this semester.” 

Check out the full video reel on Instagram to see the school-wide setup and final fall.