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My top priority as the Media Specialist is to motivate students to be life long readers. Reading is essential to learning and comprehending knowledge and gathering information. It is a also essential for communication in a digital age. According to AASL, "Reading is a foundational skill for 21st-century learners. Guiding learners to become engaged and effective users of ideas and information and to appreciate literature requires that they develop as strategic readers who can comprehend, analyze, and evaluate text in both print and digital formats." Of course as we all know it is also for fun (cue eye roll for those of you who hate reading). I tell students all the time, if you hate to read, you haven't read anything worth reading yet because I believe that is true! We all have something we are interested in and passionate about and I believe that finding this is so vital when it comes to wanting to read.
That is why the core of my reading initiative for the 2018-2019 school year will taken from Penny Kittle's Book Love Workshop. This is just one of many strategies I plan on implementing into the new Media Center program. I want reading to catch fire for our students and believe it takes more than one strategy to get students engaged and interested in reading. Below are some of the strategies I plan on implementing for the up and coming year. I plan on using technology and digital communication in various formats to engage and collaborate between students and staff. The goal is to motivate students to read all genres, both fiction and nonfiction.
Blog + Podcast for Book Talks
I am really excited to launch the blog and our very own podcast! Initially I will be running these, but eventually I would really love for them to be student lead. The blog and podcast will consist of different topics, but most importantly it will feature book talks. Book talks are mini reviews on the books students read. Students give their thoughts and opinions about the book they read. When other students read or hear what another peer thinks about the book it works as either a positive or negative influence to read the book. This essentially becomes student lead book referrals. This is amazing, because it means students not only read the book, but they were interested and bound to get others interested and excited as well! Yay you guys!
Independent Reading Initiative (Adapted from Penny Kittle's Book Love).
The MHS Media Center's reading initiative is based off the professional work of Penny Kittle. Kittle believes in independent reading to increase, fluency, stamina, and joy in reading. According to her workshop handout from her book Read & Write Beside Them, "When independent reading is encouraged by allowing time to read in class, free choice of books students read, and accountability held by the teacher for what students are reading, then real motivation for reading begins to take place." (Kittle, 2)
The reading initiative I am proposing is this. With great collaboration from teachers, I would like to implement class time for independent reading. Student's get to pick any book they would like to read and get 15 mins twice a week to read independently. Then mini conferences are given to students, which are a series of questions asked to students about their book to see if they really read the book. (This can gladly be done by me or any other teacher who would like to hold these mini conferences.) Students will keep track and record their amount of pages read and see their progress.
Download Kittle's resources for the independent reading initiative here.
Book Club
The MHS Media Center is pleased to announce a book club. The book club is for students who want to be able to collaborate, discuss, and exchange ideas about possibly the same book or each others books. According to Penny Kittle's workshop handout from her book Read & Write Beside Them the goal of book clubs is,"to encourage thinking about the ideas in these books and to broaden understanding of themes and the development of characters by discussing these books with others; to participate in an online community book club, learning from the perspectives of an online community book club, something both of your teachers have found valuable in our reading lives." (Kittle, p.8) I have a list to get students started. There can be more than one group doing a book club. The book club will agree to meet once a month in the media center to gather and organize in person, but the majority of the book club discussion will be done online where students can write on discussion boards, upload videos, photos, and exchange their thoughts digitally on a weekly basis. We will use chalkup.co for an online discussion center.
Ideally, I would love for book club students to participate in writing a blog posts and being guests on the podcast. As the year progresses we would maybe be able to arrange Skyping authors and organizing other fun reading activities. I want students of the book club to be another face for reading in the school!
Social Media
I believe in the power of leveraging social media to promote reading. Social media is an easy way to create book talks and short visuals of new books through quick pictures and captions. Students are on social media so it is an easy way to promote what the media center is doing.
Collaborating with Teachers
The collaboration most needed from teachers is interrupted class time for independent reading. This is an absolute must for the reading initiative I am proposing. Although it is valuable class time I believe it is worth using on reading. We need to motivate our students to read again, to be critical thinkers, to think for themselves and that is what can happen when we give the students the time and freedom to choose what they read.
References
Barbara Carey, Megan Hernberg, Tanya Hobbs, Cathy Paul (2014) Thinkers & Tinkers What is the Maker Movement? Retrieved April 8,2018 from http://hernbergm.wixsite.com/maker-movement/background
Kittle, Penny (2018) Book Love Workshop Handout. Retrieved April 8, 2018 from http://pennykittle.net/index.php?page=workshop-handouts
American Association of School Libraries (2011) Position statement of reading as a 21st century skill. Retrieve April 8, 2018 from http://www.ala.org/aasl/advocacy/resources/statements/reading-role