During their last two visits to the library, G5 students went on a hunt for series. With this, they not only had the chance to come across new fiction titles that might interest them but also practise a useful strategy for finding recreational reading materials: simply browsing through the shelves. Further, it was a good reminder about how books in the Fiction area are arranged.

Our fifth graders thereby discovered a wonderful selection of "old and new" series of interest to share with and recommend to others. In order to let as many people as possible benefit from their findings, we collated the resources in Blendspace. Blendspace is a platform that allows students and teachers to compile digital resources which then can be easily accessed by others while inviting collaboration by allowing users to annotate the individual resources. For our purpose, we just made use of the compiling and sharing aspect, posting our resources through a single teacher account. Since we want to keep this resource open for as many people as possible to see, we decided to just use the class name. I encourage you, however, to ask your fifth grader to show you, which of the comments and resources he/she contributed. 

The results, which you can see in the Blendspaces below, speak for themselves. Well done, G5 students!

While I will elaborate more on this particular habit of lifelong readers in future posts, I want to share a few thoughts with you today how this relates to some of the expectations we have for our students when they visit the library as a class each week. I had a conversation about this with some of our students recently and thought it would be of interest to share with all of you as well. 

During their weekly library visits, students in all grades are introduced to different reading materials (e.g. different authors, series, genres and topics) as well as given the chance to choose books to check out for reading in school and at home. With both we aim at helping students to develop skills that would eventually allow them to successfully self-select reading materials. 

It is therefore an expectation that students make good use of their check out time, looking for books that interest them on our shelves and checking them out. In the process, they strengthen their knowledge about the arrangement of materials, for example, and become confident in independently locating books on particular topics or by specific authors. The skills students acquire in our library can then be transferred to other libraries, as the basic concepts of material arrangement are more or less the same in school and public libraries around the world. At the same time, students experience a wide range of texts to ultimately discover favourites.

Occasionally it happens that a student already has a long list of books checked out. We then encourage the student to spend the time reading while his/her peers choose books. Another question that comes up regularly in this context is what to do when currently reading a longer chapter book at home. In this situation, we encourage students to choose a short nonfiction title on a topic of interest or a picture book that would not interfere with the reading of the longer novel. This ensures that students keep practising to locate and select books in a library as well as exploring a wide range of reading materials.

A lot has happened over the past couple of weeks as fourth graders come to the library. While interrupted by camp, October break, and PTC, it was wonderful to see how much students took away from our short inquiry about children's author Jon Scieszka. Below a few snapshots from our learning journey. (If you missed the post about the beginning of this inquiry, click here to read it).

FINDING OUT - We shared read alouds, looked through his books, searched World Book and the online catalog and explored his website to come up with a lot of interesting facts about him. We did part of this as a little competition, to find out which source would be the fastest to access. While all of our sources gave us a wealth of information, students realized that getting into books is still the fastest way to access information (especially when you are sitting in a library ;)

SORTING OUT - We sorted the information according to our questions to see which questions were answered and which remained open.

GOING FURTHER - To answer remaining and new questions, we watched a Brainpop video and some author interviews shared through the Reading Rockets website.

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTING - Individually, we spent some time creating a snapshot of our learning about Jon Scieszka, sharing something we learned, liked and were still wondering about. We also reflected on what we could do with what we had learned now. In the images below, you can see a summary of the statements made by students in their reflections.

Currently, we are exploring strategies that can help finding books to read for fun while in the library - and from home. We began this with a QR code hunt which was very much enjoyed by students.  Stay tuned for more about this soon!

During their weekly visits to the library, PK1 students are currently focusing on two skill areas: making connections between the stories they listen to and personal experiences; and spending time exploring books in order to make informed and conscious choices during check out. Making connections between a story and personal experiences helps students to make meaning of what they are listening to. It is a great comprehension strategy while making the story relevant to their lives. I would like to encourage you to help your child making these connections also when you are reading together at home. Some stories lend themselves better to this than others, but take opportunities as they come up. Sometimes, it is enough for you to model making a connection (e.g. "This story reminds me so much of our last holiday, when we spent a day at the beach...") and leaving it up to your child whether he/she wants to add on to that are not. Other times, you might like to ask your child more directly (e.g. "Do you remember the day we went to the beach? Was it just like in the story?") - but keep it light and don't insist if your child seems not interested.

In addition, we continue referring to authors as the people who write books and illustrators as the people who draw the pictures for a story, both concepts our youngest library users are just beginning to embrace. In the same way, they continue practising to be responsible participants in our class conversations, by raising their hands and by patiently awaiting their turn before speaking.

G1 students began the year, just like other grade levels, by revisiting what the IB learner profile traits look like in the library. This provided us with essential agreements to guide our time together in the library during the school year. As a response to the read-aloud 10 Things I Love About You, we asked students to tell us how they show being an inquirer, communicator, thinker etc. in the library. As you can see from the posters in the pictures above, students came up with wonderful examples for each of the learner profile traits.

Equally important at the beginning of the school year, in particular with G1 students, who usually begin to include chapter books in their reading, is an emphasis on selection strategies. I strongly believe that choice is the single most important factor in motivating students (actually anyone) to read. For students to be able to make good choices, it is important we help them acquire strategies on how to select books. We initiated the discussion with the read-aloud Goldisocks and the Three Libearians, which narrates the story of a girl ending up in the house of three (bear) librarians and discovering books that are “not too hard and not too easy but just right”. The following discussion helped us to introduce a strategy that goes beyond the Five Finger Rule described in the book: 

Applying the right selection strategies not only helps students to find books they really enjoy but is also an important exercise in thinking critically. We want students to think critically about the books they choose, as we want them, in the same way take a critical stand towards any information they come across.

You can help your child to internalize these strategies by encouraging him/her to apply them also when selecting books outside of school, when he/she visits a bookstore or library with you for example. If you would like to read more about the “I P.I.C.K.” strategy, I recommend the article Help Kids to P.I.C.K. the Right Books by Amy Mascott.