Inquiry Blog Post #1: Fostering Reading Cultures in Schools

Fostering reading cultures are THE most important role of school teacher-librarians. I would even add that this is the role of all educators and parents. In order to develop a true reading culture in a school, the whole community must work together to promote activities and events centered on literacies. When you think about it, there are always opportunities to present a book, a text or an author's quotation related to a school theme, an event or a celebration. We just have to learn to grasp them when they present themselves. At a school assembly, on the PA system before the morning announcements, before silent reading time, etc. These moments do not need to be lengthy but recurrent. 

My big challenge as a teacher-librarian is to keep a balance between the print and the digital reading material. I noticed that since technology is much more accessible in the library, a large majority of children choose to sit in front of a screen instead of sitting comfortably in a bean bag to read a book. Some of those students ARE reading online information but most prefer to listen to a video or watch a documentary or simply challenge themselves with educational games. So my ongoing dilemma is to find ways to foster reading cultures using both on-screen AND print material. 

Keeping that in mind, I try to come up with all kind of reading opportunities to motivate students to read for pleasure, comprehension, and think critically by presenting reading material from all kind of formats.

My first big novelty was to create a Website and a Blog.  The objective of the Website was to centralize resources FOR teachers and facilitate their access and use.  Many staff members were still confused as to where to find what and how. Gathering resources in one place just made sense to me. 

The Blog, which is the first page of the Website, is a space where all sorts of news are posted: library news, school-wide events, calendar events, students accomplishments, etc. 

Here is the link to it: http://trafalgarlearningcommons.weebly.com/ 

The idea of the Website was also to initiate technology integration into the LC. As very little had been done before, it was time to get the ball rolling.  I often refer to it for any kind of reasons or project intends but most of all to get the whole school community to READ online information.

Students are slowly getting into the habit of checking the weekly updates and read the information posted. Some even add some comments to the posts. Moreover, I also recently decided to add challenge questions here and there to encourage students to further read on the information given and increase my Blog Followers number.

Another great reading initiative is to introduce Reading Challenges such as the Red Cedar Book Awards and Livromanie. The Red Cedar challenge is done at the provincial level and Livromanie at the district level.

In both cases, a selection of books, Fiction, and non-Fiction, is presented to the Intermediate students to encourage reading and introduce Canadian and francophone authors.

Here is the link to my Livromanie PowerPoint presentation.

Literary challenges are an opportunity for me to explain to students the wide range of genres that exist and that they might not even not yet.

I also created blogs for the two reading challenges to encourage students to post their comments after reading the books. They are slowly coming in:) 

Red Cedar Blog                                      Livromanie Blog (very new)

Free volunteer Reading: When I started my teacher-librarian position, I was advised by the previous librarian to direct students to pre-selected book collections with color levels. As a result, kindergarten students chose books from the easy reading boxes, the first Grade students picked from the first novel bins, etc. Basically, the students had to read what was suggested to them mostly based on their reading levels. During my first year as a TL, I followed that path until I realized that I did not like to stop kids from choosing books that were not at their "reading levels". 
Listening to Stephen Krashen Ted Talk video show on The Power of Reading was just another eye opener. So many studies prove that free voluntary reading works and even show better development in language acquisition so why not promoting it in school libraries? 

Since September of this year, I made a point to show students how to pick books that are just right for them (using the 5 fingers rule) and I let them go with that.  Since them, I can see how happy and proud they are to be allowed to go in almost every corner of the library to pick their own book selection. After all, “the big challenge is not simply getting students to read - it’s getting them to enjoy it too.” (The Gardian, 2014).  If they love books, they are set for life!

Author’s visit: Authors are bridges that help connect students connect with books and the world reality. Authors’ life experience seems to always have the ability to somehow connect with the children’s own reality. Through authors, they see future possibilities and even dreams come true. This year, we had the pleasure to welcome the Canadian author Nancy Vo at our school. She did a great presentation to our Grade 4 students. In addition to talking about her personal experiences that led her to write and illustrate her books, she emphasized the importance of the influences that others can have on us and on our own creations. As a result, students went home and felt empowered. Moreover, her book is always checked out.

School-wide events: Our school participates to the DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) event each year.

Events like this one really bring the whole school community together. 

DEAR is especially important to me as it reinforces the fact that reading is a priority in our life and a pleasurable one. It is even worth interrupting everybody’s work for a few times during the day.

Introduction of the VSB Library website: We already know that technology is very much part of our day to day life and it is a wonderful tool. However, it could make things complicated for younger students when the time comes to reading and researching information for classroom projects. The World Wide Web is vast with all sorts of information that could sometimes be confusing, false, hard to understand or simply hard to find. As Richardson says in his book Why School? “Internet access does not automatically come with an ability to use the Web well. Children need direction as how to connect and build relationship with others in safe, ethical, and effective ways.”

We are lucky in our School District as a huge effort is made in providing schools with a good selection of databases. What is even more interesting is that each teacher-librarian can add and customize databases according to the particular needs and interest of the students. The databases are not only good for research purposes but also to make connections between reading and other issues. Many kids at my school are interested in History and Social Justice topics. Even current events are often a good source of conversation. In those cases, I like to either refer to the online History, World Book, and to the Canadian Encyclopedia databases to get further information or refer to a library book on their topics of interest.
I often tell the students: “Be curious and always try to find out more!”

Displays: I like to work on displays. They are colorful, welcoming, and an eye catcher to what I want to promote: new arrivals, school themes, genres, social justice topics, future school-wide events, etc. I often use Pinterest for ideas. It is always nice to see what other TLs come up with. 

Another thing I try to do is to buy the latest suggested books from the Kidsbooks website. From time to time, I go on their site and have a peek at their featured books. They are an excellent reference to me when it is time to purchase new titles and it is always a pleasure to see the students excitement when they see the last book of a very loved series appears on a display.

In our school LC, students, teachers, staff members, and parents are welcome. The LC doors open at 8:30 every morning of the week and closes when I leave which is often around 4:30 and 5:00 and it is not rare that students stay up to 4:00 pm. I like to see students around to read, to work, to surf the net, or to share reading experiences with others and with me. Whatever their purpose is, I will find a way to link it to reading:)

There are so many ideas and references out there to foster reading cultures and very good ones. However, as I said at the beginning of this post, what I want the most is to keep a balance between the different reading text formats and make sure that the print book will always have its rightful place on the school library shelves.




Sources:

Richardson, W. (n.d.). Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere (Kindle Single) eBook: Will Richardson: Kindle Store. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Why-School-Education-Information-Everywhere-ebook/dp/B00998J5YQ

Williams, M. (2014, June 03). How to encourage students to read for pleasure: Teachers share their top tips. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/jun/03/how-to-encourage-students-read-for-pleasure-teacher-top-tips