Category: Reading

Tech Column: How to Technify Your Reading Challenge

5/1/2018

Margaret Kane Schoen is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School.

A Reading Challenge can be a great way to encourage independent or free reading in your school. At our school, we often tie our challenges to our House Cup contest, where homerooms compete to win points for one of the four houses in our school. We’ve tried several versions at our school: March Madness tournament of books, and a “shelfie” challenge where students submitted photos of themselves reading.

These contests have all been great ways to encourage reading and boost school spirit. When meeting with the House Cup team, I always try to see how we can use technology to spice up the contest (and make it easier to track and total our entries!).

This year, we wanted to encourage students to stretch their reading to new genres. We also wanted a way for the faculty to compete. We ended up with a category challenge: the library staff came up with 23 different categories of books (books set in the past, short story collections, memoirs, etc), and challenged the homerooms to see who could check off the most categories.

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Elementary Column: Reading and Thinking with our Community

5/23/2017

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Wendy Garland is the School Librarian at Avery School in Dedham

Our community read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer as a One Book, One Community read.

The different formats enabled my elementary school students to participate. I was excited to have my students think about their community and work together within it to frame our thinking. I outline our project here and on my blog. Together with our cable station we created this video:

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Four Years of One School, One Story: Why Does it Work?

2/15/2017

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The article was co-written by the following people:

Allyson McHugh: Director of ELA for Waltham Public Schools and co-chair of the One School, One Story program

Emilie Perna: English teacher at Waltham High School and co-chair of the One School, One Story program

Kendall Boninti: currently Library Teacher at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and formerly Library Teacher at Waltham High School and co-chair of the One School, One Story program

Four years ago, Waltham High School embarked on its first ever One School, One Story summer reading program. We believe that One School, One Story is a living, breathing entity that needs constant renewal and fresh ideas, in order to engage students, staff, and the greater community. Over the past four years, we have hosted authors, “read” a podcast, initiated a 24 Hour Read-a-thon, and experimented with a conference-style workshop day for students. There is nothing easy about this approach to summer reading. We essentially start from zero again every year, as opposed to reusing the same list of books for each grade level, or even the same format. Since the change in approach, readership has increased by 20%, and the program has become deeply embedded in the fabric of the school community.

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Elementary Column: Avery Elementary School’s Reading Without Walls Challenge

2/15/2017

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Wendy Garland is the School Librarian at Avery School in Dedham, MA.

I am always looking for new ways to engage readers. When National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yang, proposed the Reading Without Walls challenge I knew it was the perfect opportunity to have rich conversations with students and take deeper looks at our reading to challenge ourselves as readers.

To start the new year we began by discussing what our favorite kind of books are - we all have those. The challenge was to read outside of our comfort zone. We talked about what might happen. I proposed a three part challenge: topic, character and format.

For our first exploration of topics, students chose a non-fiction book and returned to the perimeter of the rug where we then had a "30 second book preview" activity. Students had 30 seconds to look through the book then pass it on to the next student. I wrapped up the activity by asking for a show of hands in response to a variety of questions including “Who saw something that they already knew a lot about?” “Who saw something interesting?” and “Who saw something they might like to read?”

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A Guide to Building Community through an All-School Reading Program

2/15/2017

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Meghan O'Neill is the Library and Learning Commons Director at Pingree School

In 2010, I started as the Library Director at Pingree School under the leadership of Dr. Tim Johnson, who had become Head of School in 2009. To my great surprise (and delight!), one of the first mailings that I received from Pingree included not only a printout of the daily schedule and the important dates of the school year, but also a copy of No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process by Colin Beavan.

I soon found out that No Impact Man was a Community Read, to be read by all students, faculty, and staff, followed by small group discussions in the first weeks of school. While there was already existing assigned summer reading books by department and grade level, this Community Read was the first of its kind at Pingree. Since there was no full-time librarian at that time, the program was spearheaded by a now-retired science teacher and environmentalist who wanted to use the book as a springboard for launching a composting program at the school. In addition to discussions and a new sustainability initiative, this science teacher had also coordinated a Skype session with the author that was held during one of our all-school assemblies.

Later that year, when Dr. Johnson asked me to build upon the momentum from this initial program and to make it an annual event, I was both excited and nervous. Luckily, I already had administrative buy-in (my Head of School was literally asking me to run the program, as opposed to me proposing the idea of a Common Read and needing to lobby for it) and I made note of structural elements that contributed to a successful program: a clear purpose, time for small group discussions, an accompanying event, and practical, follow-up steps. But I was brand new to Pingree, so I definitely had my work cut out for me.

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Academic Column: Summer reading: Awful? Necessary? Or awfully necessary?

5/7/2016

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Dr. Robin Cicchetti is the librarian at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School
and a winner of a 2016 MSLA Service Award

Schools are all over the place when it comes to summer reading. One thing that seems to be consistent is the moans of students who don’t want to have required reading, and the requests from parents who wonder where the expectation went. The traditional reading list has transformed over time to be less didactic and more about encouraging a love for reading. This shift certainly resonates with school librarians who promote lifelong- reading as part of our core mission. But without the mandatory check-in to ensure accountability for summer reading, how effective are our efforts?

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I’m Just Not That Into You, or I Don’t Like to Read: Students and Independent Reading

5/7/2016

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Kate Powers is the Library Media Specialist at the James M. Quinn Elementary School in Dartmouth, MA
and a winner of a 2016 MSLA President's Award

I am going to say something crazy.

I do not think it is absolutely necessary for every child to love to read.
While it is an absolutely incomparable feeling when you see a student connect with a book, or blow through an entire series, or finally find that one book that they cannot put down, I understand that those ephemeral experiences are not always going to happen. Your mileage may vary.

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Confessions of a School Librarian

5/7/2016

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Liz Phipps-Soeiro is the Library Media Specialist at Cambridgeport School in Cambridge MA
and a 2016 winner of the Ellen Berne Pathfinder Award

Over the last few weeks, librarians I admire greatly have posted their “confessions” that they are not giving every aspect of their jobs 100%. I welcome these admissions, especially as a working mother of two children and as a librarian with carts and carts of books to shelve and one thousand ideas for projects that will never come to fruition. We just can’t do it all, and that is okay!

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Celebrate Reading

5/7/2016

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Ethel Downey is a Library Teacher at Newton South High School in Newton, MA
and a winner of the MSLA Web Seal of Excellence

2004 was the 100th anniversary of Dr Seuss and his amazing children’s stories.

Hamill and Stonehill and McQuillan conspire
Get them to write
To think and inspire

Not so easy to do
This thing called a book
Success they all knew
With gobbledygook!?

Treat them to pizza
Maybe some grapes
Little Johnny and Liza
Will listen and wait

The teens wrote their stories
An assignment they took
Imagine the glories
Imagine the look
A teen telling tales
Right out of a book!
--apologies to Dr. Seuss

Picture a high school class using creative writing skills, visual literacy skills, art, and imagination to create a decidedly low-tech resource, a book. This is what three 12th grade English classes have done this year for an assignment tied to celebrating reading. And, this is not something new - it has been an annual book writing event at Newton South High School since 2004.

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One Lucky Librarian

5/7/2016

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Pat Keogh is a retired school librarian and a 2016 winner of a Peggy Hallisey Lifetime Achievement Award

From the time I walked into my first class in children's literature at Boston University with Dr. Lorraine Tolman I knew I
was hooked. We heard her read aloud from so many wonderful books by Beverly Cleary, Robert McCloskey and others. I still read children's books every day. Since learning of my good fortune to receive the Peg Hallissey Lifetime Achievement Award I have been reflecting on the twists and turns of my career.

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Tech Column: How to Technify Your Reading Challenge

Elementary Column: Reading and Thinking with our Community

Four Years of One School, One Story: Why Does it Work?

Elementary Column: Avery Elementary School’s Reading Without Walls Challenge

A Guide to Building Community through an All-School Reading Program

Academic Column: Summer reading: Awful? Necessary? Or awfully necessary?

I’m Just Not That Into You, or I Don’t Like to Read: Students and Independent Reading

Confessions of a School Librarian

Celebrate Reading

One Lucky Librarian

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Katherine Steiger
Reba Tierney

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Forum Newsletter

Co-EditorsKatherine SteigerReba Tierney

Categories

Archives

Co-Editors
Katherine Steiger
Reba Tierney