Book Domino – World Record

For years I’ve been hanging out to set up a book domino in my library.   Unfortunately I’ve never been able to convince my work colleagues.   So as a ‘frustrated’ book domino builder, all I can do is look on at the feat of others!

Here’s a recent world record attempt to build the longest book domino chain!   Run at the launch of the 2013 summer reading program at Seattle Public Library, the attempt involved 2131 books, 27 volunteers and 112 slices of pizza!

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Affirming the role of Teacher Librarians!

April is School Library Month in the US.

I came across this video in which five authors talk about the value of both libraries and teacher librarians in their lives.   If you are having any doubts about our value, just have a listen!

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The stats are frightening. Get reading!

The stats presented on the literacy levels of our students really is quite frightening.

• young children spend twice as much time in front of the televison as they do reading
• household duties and tiredness get in the way of parents reading to their young children
• 20 per cent of parents had not started reading with their 12-month-old

Presented in an article Young children spend twice as much time watching TV as they do reading stories  this research by Australia Post coincides with the launch of the Let’s Read National Early Literacy Campaign.  Some great strategies and ideas to promote reading are listed on this website.   Well worth the time to explore.

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15 year old school boy brings the gift of books to those in need!

When you read stories such as this one about 15 year old Joey Alisch, a sophomore student at Bishop Hendricken High School in Rhode Island, USA, that warm fuzzy feeling of inspiration is lit!

Having just completed his most recent trip – his seventh – to the Philippines, Joey has now collected and donated more than 10,000 books to schools across the Philippines.

It was some years ago when Joey noticed an ad on the Disney Channel encouraging youngsters to get involved in acts of charity.   After a visit to his cousin’s school in Mindoro in the Philippines, Joey was shocked to see an empty room in the school which was the library.  It was at this point that he decided that he should be collecting and donating books to schools in the Philippines.  And so he has, ever since!

Joey’s character shines through a short video published on YouTube.  He sums up his intent well by saying:

MY VISION:  To help the Filipino Children
MY MISSION: To continue helping build libraries in the Philippines.  I hope they will enjoy reading & exploring the wonderful world of BOOKS

The story is inspiring. So too is the video:

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Is it time to chuck out the books in our school libraries?!

It’s a daring question to pose to those of us working in school libraries ….. but ….. clearing out the entire book collection is exactly what has happened in one school library in Minneapolis in the US.

Seen to be responding to the February 2012 Obama Administration’s challenge to schools to embrace digital textbooks within 5 years, Benilde-St Margaret’s last year scrapped its entire print collection to create a learning space where students and staff can meet to share ideas, research and access online databases on iPads, laptops or computers, or to just read!

I first read about this story in an article in the January 20th issue of the Huffington Post: Minneappolis School Library Without Books Thrives After Clearing Entire Print Collection.   Quoting the high school Principal, Sue Skinner, the report is, as expected, upbeat in its praise of the task undertaken.   While a few books were left in the library for ‘reference’, teachers throughout the school were able to take books they wanted for their classroom libraries.  All the remaining books were packaged up and donated to schools in Africa.

Responsibility for the dismantling of the library seems to have been completed by none other than the school principal.  In the new digital Benilde library, Math and Literacy coaches work with students as they research using online databases such as Gale and ProQuest.   A look at the school website is a little frightening though.   There is no mention of a school library or library staff.  So who then directs this new library?  Sadly, no one!

Digging a little deeper for more information about this story, I found a very comprehensive report on School Library Journal.  Incorporating a far more in depth interview with the school Principal, Sue Skinner, the clincher comes when Skinner confides that the current librarian is retiring and that a search is underway for a visionary leader who holds similar views to Skinner to take the concept forward.   Some of the ‘tongue in cheek’ comments following this article reflect the range of thoughts and questions that virtually all Teacher Librarians working in schools would want to pose!

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Staging a successful Literary Festival

Reading permeates every aspect of our lives.  As an important skill that continually opens doors, it is without doubt, one of the most powerful and enjoyable recreational and educational tools known to man.

Throughout both my personal and professional life, I’ve taken every opportunity to ignite a love of reading in those around me.  I consider myself fortunate to have inspired both colleagues and students in a number of schools to join with me in the celebration of literature and to help unveil the many and varied joys of reading.

So when the opportunity came along to share details of a program I’d instituted in one of the schools in which I’d worked, I didn’t hesitate.  By writing an article about my experiences in staging a Literary Festival, I aimed to inspire yet more people to realize that it is well worth the effort and is not, in fact, all that complex.

Published in the latest edition of FYI, a publication of SLAV – School Library Association of Victoria – (Volume 16, Number 3, Winter 2012) my article appears alongside others which have focused on the theme of “Reading in 2012 and beyond” – a theme which no doubt emanates from the amazing celebration of literature which has been happening throughout Australia in this the National Year of Reading.

As the publication FYI is not currently available in full online, I have, with permission of the FYI editor, reproduced my article both here and on NovaNews, my other blog.    Should you wish, I am available for either consultation or assistance to help make a Literary Festival a reality in your school.

Enjoy the article.  I hope it leaves you feeling inspired to ‘give it a go!’

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You can do it!  Stage a successful Literary Festival.

2012 has been a bonanza year for literature.  2013 should be even bigger and better!

Take advantage of the excitement spun throughout 2012 and plan big for next year!  Close your eyes and dream.  Imagine the joy, the exhilaration and the euphoria that can be achieved by bringing literature to life.  Think outside the square.  Take the plunge and initiate a wide and varied range of literary events that will sweep your school off its feet!  Create an even greater splash than you have this year by staging a Literary Festival – an event which will inspire and ignite a passion for literature within and among all members of your school community.

Too hard, you think?  Too expensive?  Too much work?

The simple response is – no ….. not at all.  Staging a Literary Festival is actually not as hard as it sounds.  How do I know?  Because I’ve done it!

Back in 2006, when the school in which I was working relocated its Year 9-12 students to a new, dedicated senior campus, I was faced with the challenge of re-designing our literature programs so they would more fully reflect the nature of the campus and its students.   Conscious of wanting to excite and inspire a love of literature, I also aimed to create an event which would encapsulate the interests of students in our new senior campus.  So was born the Literary Festival, an event which was more sophisticated and appealing to our senior school students than the traditional well-worn ‘Book Week’ activities so regularly promoted by Teacher Librarians across the country.  Swept up with the euphoria pumped out during the planning stages, the entire senior school staff joined with students in celebrating literature across the curriculum.  With 18 presenters and nearly 50 concurrent sessions in its first year and 26 presenters and more than 80 concurrent sessions in its second year, the two Literary Festivals held in 2007 and 2008 ran over three and four consecutive days respectively.  With the usual timetable put on hold, students, staff as well as many members of the extended school community joined hands in the celebration of literature.   The joy reflected on the faces of participants as well as the pleasure derived from both written and verbal feedback was enormous.  So too was the immediate demand for book loans!

So where and how do you start planning an event such as a Literary Festival?   How on earth do you fund it?   How do you get people on board to assist with planning?  And how do you timetable it so that it all runs like clockwork?  Questions, questions, questions!  One thing you can be sure of is that questions such as these will continually pop up throughout the planning stages.  From the outset, you will need three key ingredients:  Enthusiasm, determination and perseverance.  Alongside this you need to attend very carefully to fine details!  Be sure to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.  When you most doubt it, you will find that problems and issues that present themselves will either get resolved or resolve themselves.  Retain a calmness and sureness while keeping a grasp on the ‘big picture’ that you are trying to create.

Write a rationale:

Figure out what it is you want to do, how you see it being put into action and who it is you want to involve.

Convincing others of the value of implementing a new idea is hard.   You therefore need to be very clear from the outset that you are keen to take on a leadership role in the planning, staging and implementation of the Literary Festival.  Write and present your rationale to the Principal, to Heads of Campus and to key school leaders.   Request to present the idea at a Curriculum Committee meeting where various Heads of Faculties are present.  Sell the concept with enthusiasm and you will find that your excitement will ignite an enthusiasm in others.

State in clear terms what the Literary Festival is to entail including its length, specific dates and how you anticipate it being run.  Outline the reasons for wanting to stage the Literary Festival including benefits to be derived.  Describe the intended audience: all students of a specific campus, a year level and/or parents and members of the extended school community.  Explain who will be involved in staging the event – Library staff, Library and English staff or representatives of a number of school departments.

Determining these kinds of details will allow you to refine specifics needed to actually stage the Literary Festival.  Once the number of days and the size of the audience are decided it will then be possible to determine the number of presentations needed and the likely costs.

Planning Committee:

Having a small dedicated team who are willing to put in the hours and the thinking necessary for staging the Literary Festival is a key to its success.   You may find that members of the Library staff are the most reliable, available and committed.  There may also be an eager member of the English staff who is ready to team with you.   Then again, it may turn out that you are the only one who is really enthusiastic and committed to the idea!  Don’t despair – you can do it alone!

In addition to a planning committee, have key members of staff who can act as a sounding board.   And don’t forget to ask for student involvement.   After all, the event is being staged for students so they will have an idea of what they think is great and what they think will be boring!

Selecting presenters:

Deciding on the presenters to be included in your Literary Festival will depend on what it is you are trying to achieve.  It can be a staid affair involving author talks and workshops or it can be a dynamic event incorporating a wide range of presenters.   In addition to authors and illustrators, consider including song writers, poets, hip hop artists, clay animators, puppeteers, scientists, journalists, musicians, actors and motivation speakers all of whom are united in their passionate desire to engage, stimulate and challenge us with their love of the written and spoken word.

As teachers across the school become inspired to participate in the Literary Festival, more and more ideas of suitable presenters will be generated.  As these ideas are incorporated into program planning, you will find teachers eagerly embracing proposals you suggest of suitable presenters.  Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm!  Continuous lateral thinking will generate some amazingly exciting ideas.

Funding:

Involving many presenters in a Literary Festival is without doubt exciting!   Unfortunately it can also be very costly.  Don’t let this put you off though.  Think outside the box!

The Literary Festival does not have to be funded solely from the Library budget.  By incorporating events focused on a range of curriculum areas, it is reasonable to request that those faculties contribute to the costs.  Not all presenters need to be hired.  Look at the school community – parents, board members, friends and most especially friends of friends!   Don’t be surprised when they are thrilled to be invited to present.  Accept all volunteers gratefully.  And don’t forget to call for teachers to volunteer their skills – you will be amazed at what they have to offer!

Explore the availability of school administration funds to cover the cost of publicity material such as posters and programs.  Write a brief describing your Literary Festival and approach local book shops to run a book fair.  If your event is to include a lunch or morning/afternoon tea, approach local food shops to donate food in return for a mention on the program.  If planning of your event commences well in advance, consider local funding grants that are available.

Publicity

A range of publicity material will be needed to not only inform, but to excite your school community about the impending Literary Festival.  Posters, liberally displayed around the school will inform and excite.  Articles in both the school newsletter and local press can be staged so as to slowly build up both an interest and an expectation of a very special event.   Blog posts with engaging ‘sneak peek’ details on the school and school library blogs should be well publicized via social media such as Twitter and Facebook.  Promotional videos could also be made and uploaded to YouTube to ensure interest and intrigue.

As the event draws closer, program outlines incorporating biographical details of presenters and event outlines will be needed.   Some events may need to be ‘ticketed’.   Bulletin board displays will need to be created and tended.  Overhead projections as a background to presentations, while not essential, certainly make a powerful addition.

The creation of publicity materials can be very time consuming.  Tap into support services available to the school administration.  Request the involvement of students or work with art teachers to enlist the interest of students.  Take care though to retain an involvement and control over the content and design of publicity material being generated to ensure that it accurately represents the nature of the Literary Festival being planned.

And finally:

Planning what, why, when, where and how a Literary Festival is to be staged is a big undertaking.  Dealing with the never ending details can be exhausting.  Being clear headed about what it is you want to achieve is essential.   Calling on the expertise of others for both ideas and support is advantageous.

Like building a house, it is the planning and design that is most important.   Begin planning well in advance.   A year ahead is not unreasonable.

Soon into the planning though, you will find that your Literary Festival develops a life of its own.   Take time to reflect on what it is you are creating, but most of all, enjoy the ride!

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A perfect book shelf – READ!

Just love this book shelf!

How cool it would be to have this book shelf adorning the wall of our school library.   While I’m not sure it would be easy to locate a book shelved here, it sure would entice readers to select a book!

Although I’ve run an exhaustive search of the creator of this gem, I can’t find anyone.   Let me know if you happen to know its creator so I put an update here.

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National Year of Reading – what’s that!?

Wondering what The National Year of Reading is all about?

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Programs to assist students with reading difficulties

Having spent many years of my career working with students who have reading difficulties has encouraged my strong interest in reading programs designed to assist this group of students.

On the surface, Scholastic’s reading program “Read 180″ seems to hold much potential for successful intervention.  In a post – Learning to Read Goes High-Tech – on  the blog Mind/Shift: How we Learn, details of the successful implementation of this program with classes of disadvantaged students in New Jersey are outlined.

Given that the subject of this report is about reading, I found it both novel and highly valuable that an audio feed was included with this post.  So if you’re not inclined to read this post, certainly run the audio to have a listen.

In this, the National Year of Reading, I think it is imperative that we pay as much attention to our non-readers and those who struggle with reading as much as we do for those students who are reading comfortably at an appropriate reading level.

As a Teacher Librarian in a large school, it is a challenge to identify and assist those students having difficulty with reading without embarrassing them or reinforcing their sense of failure. I’d be really interested to hear about programs, techniques and ideas that others have in place to assist this group of readers. Does anyone know if Scholastic’s “Read 180″ is being used in Australia?  I imagine, to be affective here though, there would need to be modification to the database to make it suitable for use in Australian schools.

Sharing techniques, ideas and programs amongst each other in either the Blogosphere or Twittersphere is a powerful contribution to our collective aim of developing our students’ skills.

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What’s a good book to read Miss?

Recently I was asked to write a guest blog post for Bright Ideas, the blog of the School Library Association of Victoria focusing on tools that encourage reading in schools.  Largely, this post was a compilation of a number of tools I’ve previously highlighted on this blog.  Published just recently in two parts on Bright Ideas, I thought that readers of BevsBookBlog may be interseted to read this post in full.  Here it is.

Discovering the joys of the Blogosphere about 18 months ago, it didn’t take me long before I discovered that I really had heaps that I too wanted to share with others.  So nearly a year ago, I launched my second blog – BevsBookBlog – in which I aim to share all kinds of bits and pieces about young adult literature, reading, bookshops, writing competitions and of course great websites which I happen upon and think will be of interest to others.

Among those literature related websites I’ve come across lately are a host which would be fun to promote in our school libraries.  Not only do students get a kick out of exploring these sites, but along the way, they can be enticed and inspired to read.

How many times for example have you been asked for a good book recommendation?   I don’t know about you, but often times, I go blank and quickly dive for the nearest computer so that I can trawl through my lengthy book log – the one I started many years ago – to jog my memory of books I’ve read.

But nowadays I find I can respond to that request in a much more exciting way.   There’s a plethora of sites out there that are fun, colourful, appealing and current.

One that immediately springs to mind is BookFlavor which greets you with an array of book covers – lots and lots of them – just waiting to be browsed and explored.  By selecting a book cover, you will be taken to not only a summary, but also a host of reviews of the book – some of which are taken directly from GoodReads.  Know the name of a book?  Type it in and see what appears!   It’s amazing to see the range and number of book covers for the same title.  Don’t find anything enticing?  Just keep pulling the scroll bar down.  The more you scroll down, the more book covers load!!  BookFlavor allows  you to search not only by title and author, but also by genre – science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller – you name it they are all there.   Try adding in the search term Young Adult ahead of the genre.   You’ll be pleasantly surprised!

If you’re looking for something less flashy though, you may want to try the Any new books? website.  Simply register your email address, select from an extensive list of genres that interest you and enjoy receiving a list of new book titles emailed to you on a weekly basis.  How cool is that?!

Or how about this one: What should I read next?  Start typing the title or the author of a book you like and select the link that comes up to see heaps of suggested titles to read next.  By selecting the little book icon next to the book title, the screen flips to Amazon where it’s possible to read reviews of the book prior to purchasing or searching for the book in your favourite library.

Maybe locking into a Social Networking site such as You are what you read! would be enticing.  Find out what others are reading – celebrities, authors, educators or librarians – by creating and sharing a ‘bookprint’ based on your five favourite books.  See which books have been listed and liked the most.  Search by book titles or people’s names and see others who have similar reading interests as the reader you are browsing.   Alternately select a book cover to read more about it and then identify it as one of your favourites.

I also came across whichbook – another tool which allows you to find that elusive next book to read.  Have fun playing with descriptors which help narrow down a book that fits with your taste or mood.  Select descriptors such as ‘happy or sad’, ‘funny or serious’, ‘easy or demanding’ , ‘optimistic or bleak’ and then move the indicator tab to reflect how happy or sad you want the book to be, select GO and voila, book recommendations flow onto the screen!  Not interested in creating your own book list?  No worries! Just select anyone of the catchy categories such as ‘Slapstick’, ‘Short and sweet’, ‘Laugh your pants off’, ‘Weird and wonderful’ to see prepared recommendation lists.  You’re bound to find something that tickles your fancy!

Literature Map is also another cool way to help put your hands on a next good read.  To use, just type in the name of an author you enjoy reading and then watch a bunch of author names spiral onto the screen.  The closer the names, the moe similar the writers.  It’s a great way to prod the memory for ‘like’ authors. And don’t be shy – add authors not already in the database so that the many quality Australian authors get recognized on this great website.

Use these and other websites now available to entertain, impress, excite and entice students about the wealth of literature that is just waiting to be read.  Answer students’ requests by not only recommending a good book that you’re pretty sure they’ll like, but by teaching them how to use these sites to find the next good book for themselves!  After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

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