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.
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