Lights! Camera! Learn!

A favorite storybook character, and a little star power, help North Carolina second graders reconnect with reading.

Photos: Tracy Wilcox

Second-grade teacher Brian Freeman was worried. In a year, his students would face North Carolina's state tests for reading comprehension and math—and Freeman wasn't sure they were ready. What could he do to motivate them to become voracious readers?

Freeman loved reading Jeff Brown's children's book Flat Stanley to his students. And the children seemed equally intrigued by the playful story, which chronicles the misadventures of a little boy, squashed flat by a falling bulletin board, as he travels around the country in an envelope. Drawing on the book's story line, Freeman created an engaging interdisciplinary project that boosted his students' reading performance and attracted statewide attention.

He knew his students in rural Robeson County were fascinated with their favorite celebrities. So Freeman had his students create their own Flat Stanley cut-outs and send them, along with personal letters, to "visit" their favorite sports and entertainment idols.

By the time Freeman's project got a full head of steam, more than two dozen celebrities had responded to the children's letters, including Michael Jordan, Jennifer Lopez, Muhammad Ali, Bill Gates, Jay Leno, and First Lady Laura Bush. More important than any of the flash, however, was the substantive learning that occurred. During the course of the project, Freeman encouraged his students to read two books each night—and he wasn't above holding celebrity mail hostage until students reached their reading goals. The results were astounding.

At the end of the first nine weeks of school, each student had read an average of 42 books for the grading period. By the end of the year, kids were reading 136 books per grading period—reading more than 7,000 books the entire year.

"I saw the children reading without being told to," Freeman says. "Children asked to take books home on the weekend so they could read more." Freeman's students improved their reading comprehension and fluency as well. For every book read, students completed a computerized comprehension test from the Accelerated Reader Program. At the beginning of the project only 57 percent of his students scored 80 or above on the tests. By the end of the year, more than 90 percent of his students had reached the passing rate. Along the way, Freeman involved students in a dazzling variety of other disciplines too. The students practiced their math skills by calculating postage and the number of miles their Flat Stanley letters traveled. They used technology to research travel distances online and create digital graphs to chart celebrities' popularity among students. Freeman even partnered the activity with social studies lessons about the local community, tying into Flat Stanley's themes about the importance of home and family.

Freeman's creativity has not gone unnoticed. In December, he received the prestigious NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence and a $25,000 prize. Before that, the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) awarded Freeman the Terry Sanford Award for Creativity in Teaching and Administration. Meanwhile, Staff Development for Educators (a professional development company) named Freeman the 2002-03 National Second-Grade Teacher of the Year. That honor earned him a trip to the National Second-Grade Conference where he met the author of Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown. USA Today even named him one of the top 40 teachers in America.

But Freeman deflects the praise he's received from so many teaching honors by saying he's just doing his job, which is to make learning "fun, magical, and easy." It's working.

All of which goes to prove what educators have known for years: When you match a creative program with a brilliant teacher, the benefits to students can be spectacular.

—David Martin

For more creative project ideas using the book Flat Stanley, check out the Flat Stanley Project.