Starbooks: A Literacy Café at POBMS

Plainview, NY — Plainview-Old Bethpage Middle School (POBMS) in the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District recently hosted its second annual Literacy Café for students. The event was created with the mission of encouraging 5th and 6th graders to explore new books through genres, styles, and authors.

This year, given the unique circumstances brought on by COVID-19, event creators, Rachel Quattrocchi and Elizabeth Rooney, utilized a virtual platform for the Starbooks Café. The virtual café began with a Memoji video featuring the café creators explaining how the event will work. Students then continued to virtually visit different rooms, each offering a wide variety of book titles organized by genres.

As students entered each genre room, they were able to click on the cover of various new, popular books. This opened a separate tab with a video of a POBMS teacher or administrator volunteer introducing that text. Each student was given a menu to use as a note catcher to write down their thoughts about their different reading selections. Popular titles included Class Act by Jerry Craft, My Life as a Potato by Arianne Costner, and The Boy Who Became a Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story by Jim DiBartolo.

Although this event was very different from the previous year's, the Starbooks Café was a major success, and it was clear that students enjoyed the opportunity to participate on the virtual platform.

The Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District continuously advocates for students to discover ways to make learning more meaningful and is committed to finding new techniques for teaching literacy to its students.

For more information about the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District, please visit the District’s website at www.pobschools.org. Exciting activities happening throughout the District and programs celebrating student achievement can also be found on the District’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pobschools/