It’s the season of love and students at Dartmouth Middle School are sharing their love of the community and reading with a donation of more than 7,000 books to Acushnet-based charity GiftsToGive.

Between Feb. 7 and 11, the students lined the walls  with boxes and bags of books for this year’s drive, which was hosted the school’s National Junior Honor Society.

"I was just so shocked to see that our school did that; a school with around 1,000 students and staff collected 7,000 books,” said Honor Society Treasurer Sophia Rutkowski.

To encourage participation, homerooms held a competition to see which one at each grade level could collect the most.

The winer for the sixth grade class was the homeroom of Emily Gonet, which saw students bring in 468 books.

Brining home the title for the seventh grade was the homeroom of English Language Arts teacher Annie-Laurie Jacob. Her students collected 1,060 — the most out of any class at Dartmouth Middle School this year.

Laura Hellstrom’s class took the top spot among the eight grade homerooms, with students collecting 473 books.

According to a press release from the National Junior Honor Society, the bulk of the books donated by Hellstrom’s class came from student Brady Edgecomb, who “spent hours going through old books in his home and his mother’s classroom.”

The winning homerooms will receive a pizza party as a reward for their students’ efforts.

While the drive is now over, students are already looking ahead to the next one.

“In the future, it can be expected that DMS’s Honor Society will collect more books, make more records, and impact more young lives,” said Honor Society President Annica Dupre.

To date, the middle school has collected more than 37,000 books for charity.