I have always loved to read and so promoting reading is a genuine passion of mine and something that is very easy for me to get jazzed up about! We do all kinds of things to encourage reading in our school, from working with parents and reading volunteers to home reading programs and book clubs. We have teachers collaborating during targeted reading instruction times, we have students of all ages reading together, and we have big buddies as reading coaches. Our teachers have spent a huge amount of personal professional development time and our school and district have invested significantly in adopting Richard Allington's six T's of Effective Literacy Instruction: Time, Texts, Teach, Talk, Tasks, Tests (1). It's a long and detailed story, but the short version is that we engage students in reading daily with "just right" texts following specific instructional strategies that Allington suggests as critical to improving reading skills for all readers. In this endeavor, I am deeply involved in a variety of ways but a few little "extras" that I really like are:
- Free books!
- Hallway home readers
- Library highlights - new books, theme of the week books, online books, etc.
One of our most successful reading supports at our school is our hallway Home Reading book selection. These bins are set up in the hallway and are filled with leveled books that kids can choose for overnight borrowing. Students have been taught about "just right" texts and are able to independently select "just right" books at their level - yes, even our grade one emergent readers! There is always a buzz of activity by the hallway home reading bins and again, the talking about books that happens here is quite something! The kids absolutely love choosing the books and giving each other advice as to which books they have made connections with, etc.
To keep this blog post from overflowing, I lumped a number of strategies that I use for promoting reading into the "Library highlights" category. This is where I really just get to have fun pumping up reading! Every library class I showcase all kinds of books, including online book sites such as Storyline Online and making connections with our local Okanagan Regional Library, which has excellent eResources for kids. I show newly purchased books (usually that students have requested on the student request board) or theme-related books (to make connections, model a specific reading strategy, etc.). Sometimes I engage the teachers during library visits by having them help me read a story "reader's theatre" style (and yes, we change our voices!). The bottom line here is that I show enthusiasm for reading and I try to meet the interests of all the students with choosing books that they like. We have targeted most of our funds this year for junior non-fiction books and leveled classroom libraries to keep students engaged with "just right" texts.
I am thinking that maybe our library could have a blog so that kids can post book reviews...I will have to look into how we can make this work!
References:
1) This article was originally published in the June 2002 issue of Phi Delta Kappan as "What I've Learned About Effective Reading Instruction From a Decade of Studying Exemplary Elementary Classroom Teachers." Source: Phi Delta Kappan, 20020601, Vol. 83 Issue 10, p740
Item: EJ648693
Images:
1. I Love Reading! https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGeS6bzxUWLr1ic5XQTv67-SL9PwHWCLMiePcHQ4jLvxnXWYjm
2.http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://odearylibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Free-Books-620x350.jpg&imgrefurl=http://odearylibrary.com/book-love/arcs-get/&h=350&w=620&tbnid=H7YRTR_rHUcNVM:&zoom=1&docid=8jg2h_tOXIZidM&ei=Q17UVND7EYfwoASLr4GQDQ&tbm=isch&client=firefox-a&ved=0CCoQMygNMA0
3. children reading on a bench: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSLtmoYPj3A1oWk9NDw5cyLjl53K0mZHSZExEsHz_U8vy_Uee42
Great job on sharing all the wonderful ideas in your library! I too give away some 'free' books that we've weeded and the students are so excited for the opportunity to take some books home to "keep"!! I also really liked how accessible your make your collection with hallway selections, book displays and many options for self-selection. Great idea as well to showcase new purchases on a school library blog! I think you should definitely look into that (in fact, it could form part of your final "vision" project at the end of the course!).
ReplyDeleteOne aspect to work on for future blog posts is to begin "tagging" or "labelling" them so that you are adding "meta-keywords" to each blog post that help your blog organize all the posts on one specific topic.
tagging...labelling...is there a button for that like there is for creating a hyperlink (I was pretty excited at finding that one!)...I will look into it!
DeleteThanks Aaron!
Colline, it's interesting to hear that you have a bit of a system which gets the books into kids' hands as you culling your library catalogue . I've been pulling some pretty dusty volumes from my library's shelves -- I found some that haven't been signed out since the 60s -- and kids have definitely been excited to sift through the cart once it's clear these books are on their way out. But looking at what you're doing, I'm going to do a little more promotional work to ensure these books go to a good home.
ReplyDeleteHi Kelly - It really started with my library clerk...we needed a "happy medium" between the two of us: I'm a "throw it out" kinda gal and she's a "but maybe someone might like this" kinda gal so we brainstormed and came up with this compromise. :0)
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