Earlier this summer I was at a workshop by Eric Jensen expanding my knowledge base from his books "Teaching Kids with Poverty in Mind." It was while I was there that "The Book Whisperer" by Donalyn Miller was recommended to me. The teacher was very enthusiastic about the title and I had already ordered the title for our Professional collection. Needless to say I was excited when both it and "Reading in the Wild" arrived at school. I took "Book Whisperer" home with me and read it. It was a quick read and best of all it excited me about reading. I'm a librarian, so I'm a reader at heart but it is always refreshing to read books that are written with passion and a desire to inspire others in education.
As I flew through the book I got frustrated that I couldn't highlight inside it because it was a library book. Rarely do I read a book from a library, especially a professional book and think, I need to get my own copy of this. That said, it encapsulated and gave voice to my own philosophy of inspiring a life-long love of reading.
I've been doing a lot of reading recently with being in grad school but I am sad to say that, like our students it was purely for information gathering purposes and not only did not inspire a love of reading. As a result I can certainly relate to students reading a number of texts that they simply don't love. Thankfully I have been buoyed by a strong foundation that can overcome this less than enjoyable reading to remember that come reading can in fact be fun.
Oddly, this philosophy is somewhat contrasted with "Annual Growth for All Students" which shows how a school system's approach to address reading deficiencies in it's students before 3rd grade. The methods successfully implemented in by the staff in this book use pre-scripted lesson methods and materials like those found in the "Imagine It" series, a textbook source our school system uses. It is a method that many teachers do not like because they feel that it stifles their individual strengths or their unique classroom makeup.
The reason that many students are behind in their reading skills is that they have not been exposed to or given the opportunity to read as much as others. I would imagine that whether you choose to use the pre-scripted methods or the more personalized choose your own books (that are on your actual reading level, not your grade level), I imagine the key is what kind of data you collect and how you analyze it to determine deficiencies and skills that need addressing. Certainly many books on a wide variety of levels can do this,it just becomes a bit more work to make it happen. Admittedly, more work is nt something most of us want to hear. Yet having said that, if we can create students who love to read, their internal motivation should help solve the problem of students struggling with reading skills while also creating a society of literate citizens, something we should all desire whether we teach, have children of our own, or merely live here.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Monday, August 4, 2014
An Explosion of Initaitives
This summer I decided to try a few new things to challenge myself professionally. My previous post was one program that I plan to work on. This post will share several other initiatives that our library will be exploring this year.
Last Spring I got to hear an inspirational talk from one of the leaders in the library field and someone I feel speaks to some of the very real challenge our profession faces. +Jennifer LaGarde set me to thinking both in her talk to our county's librarians, and in listening to her speech at AASL. My thanks to those who posted it to YouTube. While I like to think of my library as a warm and inviting place I also know that there are some areas where recalibration and reinvention are necessary. Perhaps some of you have tried these at least some of these efforts in your library in the past. If so I would love to know how they worked.
1. This year, thanks to the persistence of some staff members and the willingness of our PTA to fund the effort, our school will form its own Elementary Battle of the Books team in the 4th and 5th grades. I've been involved in the NC Children's Book Award Program for years but I've never participated in this particular program. It is my hope that this program will allow our most advanced readers to grow in their reading skills and find a way to experience some academic competition. Having seen some of the other programs in our district I know that there are some success stories and tough competition.
2. One of the untapped resources over the years that I have missed is student publishing. I have from time to time been given student created comic books which I have willingly cataloged and checked out. Having said that I have never actively promoted this concept. Obviously the best way to get better at writing is to practice. In addition, what better way to get students to understand the need to edit and revise their works. Most importantly it explores the area of Intellectual Property from a different perspective than we usually do since the student is the creator.
3. For the last several years our school has hosted parent and child book clubs. In the past a colleague of mine organized and facilitated these groups twice a year for third, fourth, and fifth grade students. This year she will not be at our school but I was honored when she asked me to take over a project that I know was very dear to her. I look forward to engaging conversations with parents and their children over some new books. Again, I can't begin to say thank you enough to our PTA who have been willing to purchase books for this outreach.
4. The opportunity I am most excited about the potential for however is the creation of a Boys Reading Club. I applied for a grant to fund the purchase of books for this endeavor so I will need to wait another month to see if it comes to fruition. If it does, then the plan is to let the boys select the books they want to purchase from some catalogs. They will meet several times through out the year and will share their reading experiences with their peers as well as create book reviews to install on our Online Catalog System and perhaps some book trailers to run on our school broadcast system. Boys and reading has been a passion of mine for a long time so I am hopeful that this project will work out. even if the funding doesn't come through I will have the book club but simply let students pick out books from our library collection to use. Either way this should be a fun experiment.
For those of you who are interested, yes we will still be doing all the programs we have done before in the library, we are just seeing if we can dig a little deeper. I'm setting higher expectations for myself and my students this year. I'm excited to see what learning and growth occurs for all of us as a result.
Last Spring I got to hear an inspirational talk from one of the leaders in the library field and someone I feel speaks to some of the very real challenge our profession faces. +Jennifer LaGarde set me to thinking both in her talk to our county's librarians, and in listening to her speech at AASL. My thanks to those who posted it to YouTube. While I like to think of my library as a warm and inviting place I also know that there are some areas where recalibration and reinvention are necessary. Perhaps some of you have tried these at least some of these efforts in your library in the past. If so I would love to know how they worked.
1. This year, thanks to the persistence of some staff members and the willingness of our PTA to fund the effort, our school will form its own Elementary Battle of the Books team in the 4th and 5th grades. I've been involved in the NC Children's Book Award Program for years but I've never participated in this particular program. It is my hope that this program will allow our most advanced readers to grow in their reading skills and find a way to experience some academic competition. Having seen some of the other programs in our district I know that there are some success stories and tough competition.
2. One of the untapped resources over the years that I have missed is student publishing. I have from time to time been given student created comic books which I have willingly cataloged and checked out. Having said that I have never actively promoted this concept. Obviously the best way to get better at writing is to practice. In addition, what better way to get students to understand the need to edit and revise their works. Most importantly it explores the area of Intellectual Property from a different perspective than we usually do since the student is the creator.
3. For the last several years our school has hosted parent and child book clubs. In the past a colleague of mine organized and facilitated these groups twice a year for third, fourth, and fifth grade students. This year she will not be at our school but I was honored when she asked me to take over a project that I know was very dear to her. I look forward to engaging conversations with parents and their children over some new books. Again, I can't begin to say thank you enough to our PTA who have been willing to purchase books for this outreach.
4. The opportunity I am most excited about the potential for however is the creation of a Boys Reading Club. I applied for a grant to fund the purchase of books for this endeavor so I will need to wait another month to see if it comes to fruition. If it does, then the plan is to let the boys select the books they want to purchase from some catalogs. They will meet several times through out the year and will share their reading experiences with their peers as well as create book reviews to install on our Online Catalog System and perhaps some book trailers to run on our school broadcast system. Boys and reading has been a passion of mine for a long time so I am hopeful that this project will work out. even if the funding doesn't come through I will have the book club but simply let students pick out books from our library collection to use. Either way this should be a fun experiment.
For those of you who are interested, yes we will still be doing all the programs we have done before in the library, we are just seeing if we can dig a little deeper. I'm setting higher expectations for myself and my students this year. I'm excited to see what learning and growth occurs for all of us as a result.
No One to Listen
One of my favorite images of children is watching them snuggle up to a parent and listen to a good story. My wife and I enjoy this evening activity with our son on a nightly basis. The hope is that by establishing this routine now, he will be more likely to develop into an independent reader once he gets a bit older. This seems like something that every parent should be doing with their child. As a librarian it just makes sense. Yet for so many of my students (and probably yours too) this isn't the case. The reasons are varied and exploring them is far beyond the scope of this blog post.
I recently ran across an idea that I really liked which might address this problem. One librarian mentioned that she had noticed this problem with her students and so she had sought to address the issue by providing her third grade students with an unconventional reading buddy. She was able to acquire through various means, a collection of stuffed animals. Students were then given the option to select a stuffed animal "reading buddy," take it home, read to it, and then keep the librarian updated on how it was going. There were of course expectations and rules associated with the taking the stuffed animal home and these were gone over with the student. Students were made to understand that this was their buddy and they were responsible for its care and maintenance while it was in their possession, much like a real pet.
I don't recall whether the student was expected to keep track of the actual reading or to journal about it or not. I will need to go back and reach out to the librarian to find out specifics. I do remember that she followed up with the teachers of the students who were involved in the project and tried to monitor their growth in reading. This is taking an idea into the realm of action research. Her findings were that the majority of the students did indeed show growth. None of the students regressed. It got me thinking.
This year, there are going to be a few new ideas that I experiment with in the library. One of them will be stuffed animal reading buddies. I'll probably start with one grade level but if the program is successful why not expand it? Kids need to be shown that they are cared about and that they can be trusted to care for others. What better way to establish empathy than to given them a "friend" to share a book with. Just something to think about.
I recently ran across an idea that I really liked which might address this problem. One librarian mentioned that she had noticed this problem with her students and so she had sought to address the issue by providing her third grade students with an unconventional reading buddy. She was able to acquire through various means, a collection of stuffed animals. Students were then given the option to select a stuffed animal "reading buddy," take it home, read to it, and then keep the librarian updated on how it was going. There were of course expectations and rules associated with the taking the stuffed animal home and these were gone over with the student. Students were made to understand that this was their buddy and they were responsible for its care and maintenance while it was in their possession, much like a real pet.
I don't recall whether the student was expected to keep track of the actual reading or to journal about it or not. I will need to go back and reach out to the librarian to find out specifics. I do remember that she followed up with the teachers of the students who were involved in the project and tried to monitor their growth in reading. This is taking an idea into the realm of action research. Her findings were that the majority of the students did indeed show growth. None of the students regressed. It got me thinking.
This year, there are going to be a few new ideas that I experiment with in the library. One of them will be stuffed animal reading buddies. I'll probably start with one grade level but if the program is successful why not expand it? Kids need to be shown that they are cared about and that they can be trusted to care for others. What better way to establish empathy than to given them a "friend" to share a book with. Just something to think about.
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