Teachers promote reading with a flash mob dancing to new lyrics of Black Eyed Peas song!

Teachers and administrators at Ocoee Middle School in Florida promote reading with a flash mob dancing to new lyrics of Black Eyed Peas song!




Students and faculty at Ocoee Middle School who made a music video to promote reading -- changing the lyrics to a song by the Black-Eyed Peas -- shared the spotlight with Diane Sawyer on the Oprah show this afternoon.

The "Gotta Keep Reading" music video by Ocoee Middle featured students and staff dancing and singing, while holding books, in the school's courtyard.

Oprah Winfrey had a segment of her show filmed on the campus this morning, where she announced that she and Target would pay for a "wall-to-wall" makeover of the school library, including new furniture, new computers and 2,000 books.

"They managed to get almost 1,700 kids pumped up about something you know I love," Winfrey said during the broadcast. The Ocoee song includes the refrain, "This book's going to be a good, good book to read."

Principal Sharyn Gabriel said the school was thrilled with the attention from the national talk show and hopeful the experience would make reading seem cool to sometimes reluctant teenage readers.

"We really, really wanted to get kids excited about reading," Gabriel said.

The video idea started with the school's reading coach, Janet Bergh, who thought it would be fun to do something similar to the "flash mob" video The Oprah Show had done in Chicago.

"Students have a lot of other interests. Oftentimes, reading takes a back seat to that," Bergh said on The Oprah Show, explaining why she thought a "flash mob" video might inspire. "It's not always real cool to be seen with a book."

The school secured copyright information from the Black-Eyed Peas, and music and drama teachers then set out to write lyrics to the band's "I Gotta Feelin" song and to choreograph dance moves. Students practiced the dance in their physical education classes, and then shot video, with help from Full Sail University, in December.

Great idea to get kids interested and excited about reading!