Where Reading is as Natural as Breathing - Inquiry Blog Post #1
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| Illustration c2018 Debbie Ridpath Ohi, DebbieOhi.com/printready, free to download and print for personal and school use |
I have been a teacher librarian for five weeks now and it feels like I've come home. If my job includes brainstorming ways to develop the reading culture at my school, I'm in the right profession! As soon as I met the students at my school, I realized that there is already a strong reading culture in place here. The library is abuzz with activity before and after school and our daily book exchange periods are busy. Teachers at our school give students time to read on a daily basis and it's obvious that most students at our school consider themselves readers. As Stephen Krashen states in his "Power of Reading" video, the most important ingredient in developing readers is to give them time for free voluntary reading.
I would add that having access to a library with a friendly and responsive teacher librarian is also helpful in fostering a reading culture. In Donalyn Miller's blog post entitled, "The Key to Summer Reading? Invest in Children's Reading Lives All Year", she lists four elements that support reading engagement: time, access, choice, and community. Time and access to books are so obvious and clearly beneficial for developing readers. I wish it was universally understood that having libraries open five days a week is a huge benefit to our students. Our library is closed one day a week this year (we were open five days a week last year) and it is disappointing that cuts were made across the district.
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| DEAR Challenge Poster by BCTLA |
Our school is getting set to take part in the BCTLA's DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) Challenge on October 22nd. The entire school will start the day with twenty minutes of reading and we've invited families to stay and read with the students. We're also planning on entering teams in the Kids' Lit Quiz, a reading trivia competition that bills itself as "the sport of reading". Two years ago, our team went to the national competition in Toronto!
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| Book recommendation, photo by Holly Broadland |
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| Red Cedar nominees 2018, photo by Holly Broadland |
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| Winning bookmark from our school's bookmark competition |
Two years ago, we had a popular "Design a Bookmark" competition and I'm hoping we can do it again this year.
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| Books in languages other than English, photo by Holly Broadland |
As teacher librarians, we work to know our school community and to choose books that they connect with. As we have many English language learners who have parents who speak a language (or languages) other than English at home, we have a selection of books in various languages that students can read with their families.
Ways to Increase Reading Culture
You can always be doing more to nurture the reading culture in your school and I have lots of ideas to implement in future. I will be experimenting with joining in the Global Read Aloud for the first time this year and have connected with a classmate from this course so that we can link our classes.
I would like students to see the adults in their school as reading role models, so perhaps we can use whatimreading.org to create posters about our current reads. It's a super simple format that automatically generates a personalized reading poster.
The 40 Book Challenge by Donalyn Miller interests me and I'd like to give it a try. I found some fun 40 Book Challenge sheets on Debbie Ridpath Ohi's website on her For the Love of Reading page.
Other ideas that run through my mind include introducing students to their favourite actors reading children's books on Storyline Online (this video of Chris Pine reading Clark the Shark is great!), trying out Dress Like a Book Character Day at our school, and creating an Instagram account for our school library. So many ideas, so little time!
Other ideas that run through my mind include introducing students to their favourite actors reading children's books on Storyline Online (this video of Chris Pine reading Clark the Shark is great!), trying out Dress Like a Book Character Day at our school, and creating an Instagram account for our school library. So many ideas, so little time!
Holly, I feel exactly the same way - being in the library feels like home. Thank you for sharing so many great ideas for how to foster a reading culture in schools. The Kids Lit Quiz sounds super exciting - too bad it is not in Alberta. I have created a display in my LLC for YRCA https://www2.epl.ca/yrca/ for the nominees. Can't wait to watch your journey in this new position!!
ReplyDeleteOh I love this 40 Book Challenge that you've linked! I think this would be something super fun to try. As for the Dress Like a Book Character Day that you mentioned, we actually talked about this during our last staff meeting when we were deciding on Spirit Days that we would have this year. It would be great to have a discussion with the students about World Book Day (April 23), as typically the tradition in the UK is to dress like their favourite book character (https://www.worldbookday.com/)
ReplyDeleteWell done blog post full of excellent ideas for others to borrow in cultivating their own reading culture at their school. You are so lucky to have landed at a school with an already vibrant and supported culture of reading, literacy and excitement around learning. Your examples of fun events, good promotions, school wide support and engaging evidence, videos, links and sites will serve your readers well. So glad to read about your passion and enthusiasm for the role and space and all the great ideas. I am totally going to borrow the design your own bookmark idea! Good blog post with embedded media, subject labels, references and links.
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