Tag Archives: readingliteracy

category SLIS as Experienced Teacher–Library Lessons

Read Alouds & Free Reading in the School Library

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Read Alouds & Free Reading in the School Library - No matter your grade level, School Librarians can engage students with the power of reading using a combination of read-alouds and free reading time...but the read-alouds must be relevant and the free reading needs to be longer than just 10 minutes at the start of a class period! #NoSweatLibrarySchool Librarians love books and tend to be prolific readers. One reason we became School Librarians was to share our joy of reading with others. Any elementary School Librarian can tell you that an effective way to ‘hook’ students into reading is to read a story aloud.

Young students never seem to tire of read-alouds, but many folks may think once students move beyond the elementary years, their fascination with read-alouds dissipates, but I can assure you that secondary students love them, too!

OLDER STUDENTS ENJOY READ-ALOUDS! 

When I returned to education after a ‘mom’ hiatus I taught in an alternative high school. It was truly one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. The 15-19 year-old students in my school were “at-risk” of not graduating high school for a variety of reasons that made for poor performance in the regular classroom:

  • Poor reading or math skills, some as low as 2nd grade
  • Jobs to help support their family that kept them up late or missing days
  • Extended stay in a hospital for severe illness/accident or in rehab for addiction to drugs/alcohol
  • Lack of interest in or depression about the regular classroom, including social trauma

I learned early on that many of these kids had severely dysfunctional parents, and many never had a parent read to them as a child. One of their happiest memories was an elementary school teacher or librarian reading aloud to them.  Each teacher had an Advisory of 8-10 students that met daily, so I introduced my Advisory to books my own children had enjoyed and that these students had probably never heard.

image of book cover-500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. SeussThe first book I read aloud was an early Dr. Seuss book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, because I felt the theme of the story—perseverance in spite of criticism and intimidation—would inspire these kids. It was such a hit that I reread it each year to my Advisory, and even though some had heard the story before (we had our Advisory kids until they graduated) they loved hearing it again. I also read aloud other topical Dr. Seuss and Caldecott titles, almost all of which generated fascinating discussions among these high school students. That experience convinced me of the simplified presentation of complex issues through children’s books, and I continue to use them as a middle school librarian, to equal success.

READ -ALOUDS AS PART OF SCHOOL LIBRARY LESSONS

Make a read-aloud of Perrault's original Cinderella the focus of an ELA school library lesson. #NoSweatLibraryA particular middle school read-aloud success is during my 6g Multicultural Cinderella lesson. This collaborative co-taught lesson is designed to illustrate plot elements using the original Perrault Cinderella story as an exemplar. The 6g ELA Teacher introduces each plot element, and I, the School Librarian, read the associated story segment. While most students are familiar enough with Cinderella, many have never heard the original story. Though abbreviated for time, the read-aloud had students rapt with attention!

For the follow up activity students choose a multicultural Cinderella picture book on their table and, in pairs, read it to compare and contrast various cultural elements with the original story. The group discussion afterward emphasized to me that, not only do students enjoy being read to, but the combination of read-aloud and self-reading increases comprehension of concepts.

Make a Read-Aloud the Focus of a School Library Lesson - Here's how a School Librarian uses a read-aloud as the basis for 2 different School Library Lessons, one with 6th grade English Language Arts and one with Newcomer English Learners. #NoSweatLibraryRead-alouds are particularly powerful with ESL/ELL students, who need to hear English spoken in a fluid manner to fully grasp the rhythm and flow of their new language. My Newcomer ELLs experience read-alouds for their first 3 library visits of the school year, all designed to make them comfortable with me and with using the school library.

I also read aloud every week to our lowest-reading-level SpEd students who struggle with comprehension. Their teacher tells me what they are studying that week and I choose a story to support the subject area classroom activity. This wide range of read-alouds stimulates these students to explore the subject on their own, especially since I always pull a few fiction and/or non-fiction books on the topic for them to browse and check out.

PUT FREE READING INTO LIBRARY VISITS 

Our middle school ELA teachers all have classroom libraries, but they don’t compete with a good School Library. No matter how spacious a classroom, a teacher can only stock a few hundred books for her students; even a small middle school library can offer several thousand current Fiction books. My ELA teachers understand the difference, so that is why they schedule regular library visits every other week throughout the year.

We discovered that 10 minutes of reading at the start of each class period is not enough “free reading”. For students who have never had regular free reading, giving them 10 minutes a day to read is a great way to begin, but it can’t be the end goal. Ten minutes isn’t long enough to truly become engaged in a story: prolific readers want to read longer, and reluctant readers just want to get through the time, often jumping from one book to another and never finishing any of them.

Give Students the Gift of Silent Sustained Reading - Build student reading endurance & enjoyment by embedding extended free reading into every ELA library visit. #NoSweatLibraryTo really build readers we give students a 30-minute time period to become immersed in a story. When ELA teachers bring students to the library every other week for book return/checkout I occasionally have a lesson, but it’s a very small portion of the 50-minute period. Students always have 7-10 minutes to browse for books, and then sit down to read for the rest of the class period. During the last 10-15 minutes of the period I go to a couple tables at a time, signaling students it’s their turn to check out. This orderly checkout preserves the quiet reading atmosphere.

With a longer reading time, students become involved in the stories, continue to read on their own, and finish their books faster. Some students decide after a few minutes they don’t like the book they’ve chosen, and they still have time to find a new one and get started reading it. ELA teachers also provide a 30-minute reading time in the classroom during the interim week between library visits. The success of this strategy became evident to us with improved word recognition and reading comprehension, and we raised State Reading Test Scores. Interestingly, one year our district insisted on using the first 10 minutes of ELA periods for reading, but before the end of the first semester our ELA teachers realized it was a disaster, so we abandoned it and went back to our tried-and-true method with greater success.

My experiences as a high school teacher of at-risk students and a middle school librarian has convinced me that, no matter the grade level you teach, you can engage students with the power of reading using a combination of read-alouds and free reading time!

You can find my Multicultural Cinderella lesson and my ELL 3-visit Library Orientation lesson in NoSweat Library Lessons, my TeachersPayTeachers store.
No Sweat Multicultural Cinderella & Fairy Tales Library Lesson - Students know the Cinderella story, but examining its story elements through an interspersed read-aloud gives it new meaning. Students then read other cultural renditions of the story, and make comparisons to identify the diversity of cultural elements. #NoSweatLibrary No Sweat ELL Newcomer School Library Orientation - 3 School Library Lessons where students hear Tomás and the Library Lady, Librarian From the Black Lagoon, and The Library Dragon read aloud by the School Librarian followed by a hands-on activity to build vocabulary & comprehension. Product includes the Library Lesson Plan with WIDA-ELD Standards, ELA Common Core Standards, and National School Library Standards.

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A ‘Love’ for Reading & the School Librarian

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A 'Love' for Reading & the School Librarian - Can School Librarians promote a 'love' for reading and still meet Standards at every library visit? Do we really need to do either? Here's an analysis and some strategies that make sense. #NoSweatLibrary“Shouldn’t kids be able to enjoy reading?” is the question an elementary librarian asked on LM_NET, our librarians’ listserv. She was feeling frustrated by trying to meet Common Core Standards at every library visit with her itty-bitties: “Does a five year old really need to understand problem and solution in a story? Are we asking too much of our littlest ones? Are we teaching them a love of reading, or that it can be a pain?”

One of the biggest challenges educators face is implementing ever-changing standards, trends, and directives from administration, community, and government. How can we discern which are sustainable, long-term, best practice and which are dust in the wind?

WHAT ‘MEETING STANDARDS’ MEANS

I believe it’s important to keep in mind that Standards, of any kind or source, don’t tell us how or how quickly we accomplish a goal, but rather that students are able to meet that Standard by the end of a school year. To reference a Standard in a lesson plan does not mean we expect all students to meet the standard during that particular lesson, but only that some part of the lesson is working towards meeting the standard.

Meeting a standard doesn’t mean a student will express it in the formal language of the standard. In fact, we should expect rather the opposite: we need a kid-friendly learning goal or target aimed at short-term concept attainment that will bring students closer to the long-term understanding.

We also need to use a variety of ‘gently covert’ strategies to extract understanding from students, especially little ones. LM_NET is a great place to get ideas for expanding our repertoire. One librarian, responding to that post said this:

For in-school read-alouds, it’s a question of balance and of framing the purpose and process for an instructional read-aloud…. In my experience, when educators choose exciting books and present them in engaging ways …[kids] can learn reading comprehension strategies in the process. When we present making meaning as detective work, students, even kindergarten children, enjoy the story. Your students might also benefit from simply sharing their personal responses to stories as think-pair-share activities. (Judi Moreillon)

Another suggested this:

If you have a collection of stories then you can introduce the concepts you are focusing on cumulatively with each one by saying something like, “Remember when we read… we thought about how being in a thunderstorm made us feel. Well, our story today is set in the dead of night so I want you to think about how that might make you feel. And how it might change the way the characters in the story think and feel and act.” … In the meantime you’ve helped them all engage more with the story, increased their understanding of the sorts of techniques authors and illustrators use and kept them engaged with story and reading as a whole. (Barbara Braxton)

Based on the librarian’s post, it seemed to me that she was already charming students with delightful stories and that they were probably gaining a deeper understanding of standards than anyone could ‘test’ for, but I suggested this:

  • Use a felt board to have a few students retell the story, expand the story, or tell a new ending to the story.
  • Make “I have…who has” cards for a round-robin matching game to help students recall the plot of the story.
  • Make finger puppets of the main characters to take home and tell the story to their parents.

Any of the above strategies can address a standard yet make it enjoyable for the student. If we use a different tactic at each storytelling, the kids don’t see it as a task, but rather as a game. Once we’ve gone through all our tactics we start over; kids are delighted to revisit a familiar activity for a new story and gradually advance toward meeting the various standards by the end of the school year.

The librarian who posed the original query seemed happy with our responses, but shortly thereafter another LM_NET post appeared from a librarian with a similar ‘love for reading’ challenge: her middle school students aren’t finishing their books.

WHEN STUDENTS AREN’T FINISHING BOOKS

As a middle school librarian, I observed students not finishing their books, and discerned the reason: quite simply, the students don’t like the books. Yes, friends, we can’t expect students to enjoy reading if they don’t enjoy the stories they’re trying to read. So, the question we need to ask is not why aren’t students finishing their books, but why don’t students like the books they choose?

The biggest problem I’ve seen is that students are rarely given enough time to find any book, let alone one that they will enjoy reading. We can help with that, as I did, by grouping our Fiction books by Subjects, the same way our Dewey books are grouped by Subjects. I originally put Subject labels on a good proportion of my fiction section, but that wasn’t enough. Students might search by subject in the online catalog or just begin browsing the aisles for story topics they like, but when their ‘time’ was up, they hadn’t been able to find what they wanted. Now that I’ve created these smaller collections of like-topic books, students find their preferred type of story much more quickly, which the teachers also appreciate.

Help Students Choose a "Just Right" Book - School Librarians can foster a love for reading when they help students choose a good book. Use this IT IS FOR ME mnemonic checklist, along with the video showing how to use it, and your students will finally start finishing their books! #NoSweatLibraryAnother problem I see is that most middle school students still don’t know how to choose a good book. To solve this problem I modified another librarian’s clever mnemonic into the IT IS FOR ME! checklist and created a short video to explain how to use it. The video & checklist are now part of my 6g ELA Library Orientation lesson every year.

For every book checkout visit, I put stacks of the paper ‘app’—it’s about the size of a smartphone—in baskets on my library tables and students turn one in to teachers at the end of the period for a daily grade. (I always have a daily grade item for a library visit & teachers appreciate that.) Students love it because they can find a good book so much more quickly. ELA teachers love it, too, because students are actually reading their books through.

You can download my IT IS FOR ME! app as a PDF from my Free Librarian Resources page. The video is freely available on both YouTube and Vimeo. Use and share however you wish, dear reader.

ESTABLISH A READING CLIMATE WITH D.E.A.R. TIME

For many years our middle school has encouraged reading by having each grade’s ELA classes visit the library on a set day of the week, every other week throughout the school year, and the classes remain the entire period for DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read). If we truly value independent reading, then we have to not only allow students time to find a book, but we also need to give them time to become immersed in the story so they want to keep reading it. (Or if a student realizes the book is not quite what they want, the extra time gives them a chance to find a different one.)

School Librarians who establish silent sustained reading (SSR) and invited book checkout will see students read more proficiently--with a rise in Reading Test scores--and also see students begin to love reading. | No Sweat LibraryWhen I have a library lesson, I limit it to about 10-15 minutes so students still have the rest of the period to look for a book and begin to read it. After students are reading quietly I invite 1 or 2 tables at a time for quiet checkout; it’s more productive—and less chaotic—than letting kids check out as soon as they find a book. I challenge you to try this quiet, invited checkout procedure and see what a difference it makes in your library visits.

Let me just say that once we established library DEAR time every other week, the percentage of students passing our State standardized Reading Test steadily increased. In 5 years we went from below 80% to above 90%. We were so successful that our district ELA department directed all middle schools to implement silent sustained reading for their students!

ACCEPT THAT NOT EVERYONE “LOVES” READING

School Librarians can help students meet Standards, and we can promote reading in and out of the classroom. However, we must accept the fact that not every student will love reading, and many will lose interest in reading literature. To “love reading” is a hobby, just like stamp collecting or building model planes. Keep in mind that many adults don’t read books for pleasure, yet they’re proficient readers who can read a book or newspaper or magazine or webpage when they need to find an answer or solve a problem. To succeed in life, our students need to be proficient readers, not voracious ones.

We also need to encourage and promote nonfiction reading among our students as well. New Standards are requiring—and tests are using—more nonfiction. As School Librarians, our challenge needs to be, not getting students to “love reading” but, teaching our students to effectively read in order to fulfill all 5 essential literacies.

line of books laying down

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