Making Reading Matter
If Teacher Librarian studies focus on the importance of Guided Inquiry (GI) and the Information Skills Process (ISP), where does reading fit in?
This is the question that I have struggled with throughout the Masters program. I’ve already touched on the difficulties of implementing GI or ISP (Kuhlthau, Maniotes & Caspari, 2007; Todd, 2010) as an RFF Librarian. Taking the whole school approach to student performance is essential for any school programming. A balanced Library Program is essential then, to ensure that student’s needs are being met. Early on I focused far too much on trying to implement formal information skills in every unit I taught during Library. However, I was neglecting the most important aspect of teaching and learning – using student data to inform practice.
‘EER500 Educational Research’ impacted greatly on my understanding of Standard 3 - Planning for and implementing effective teaching and learning and Standard 6 - Engaging in professional learning. Examining reading behaviours and how they are affected by cultural, social, economic, and other factors has changed my practice. I now offer students greater choice in the development of the collection, examining cultural backgrounds to determine expansion of our bilingual collections. I use student performance data from the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and reading level data from classroom teachers to differentiate our shared readings, create literature circles and examine and critically analyse texts, clips and oral stories originating from other cultures.
The BPS Library Blog provides links for students and parents to extend their learning about topics covered in Library. Newsletter articles promote the value and importance of reading to parents, including infographics that clearly demonstrate the differences in not reading, compared to reading just 20 minutes each day. Finally, reading research is pushed to staff via email to promote to students and parents at interview time. Discussions about these are undertaken informally to promote a culture of reading and learning amongst teachers as well.
‘ETL402 Children’s literature across the curriculum’ has provided many opportunities for continuing professional development with teachers. The readings, assessments and tasks undertaken throughout ETL402 further emphasise a balanced Library Program and the importance of reading and developing the collection to ensure an effective spread of resources across genres and priorities.
They also provide hard data to support the use of a wide variety and different types of quality literature for different purposes. Being able to refer to research data and studies makes leading literacy development easy. It is difficult to argue with proven results and I have found that teachers are more willing to try new approaches (for example, using music to teach figurative language), use unfamiliar texts and resources and develop their pedagogy further when provided examples of the resources and opportunities for integrating them in the classroom or combining them with Library programming. Again, results from the recent Teacher Librarian Survey revealed that ‘Requesting literacy advice from the Teacher Librarian’ was the most highly rated library service provided.
This is the question that I have struggled with throughout the Masters program. I’ve already touched on the difficulties of implementing GI or ISP (Kuhlthau, Maniotes & Caspari, 2007; Todd, 2010) as an RFF Librarian. Taking the whole school approach to student performance is essential for any school programming. A balanced Library Program is essential then, to ensure that student’s needs are being met. Early on I focused far too much on trying to implement formal information skills in every unit I taught during Library. However, I was neglecting the most important aspect of teaching and learning – using student data to inform practice.
‘EER500 Educational Research’ impacted greatly on my understanding of Standard 3 - Planning for and implementing effective teaching and learning and Standard 6 - Engaging in professional learning. Examining reading behaviours and how they are affected by cultural, social, economic, and other factors has changed my practice. I now offer students greater choice in the development of the collection, examining cultural backgrounds to determine expansion of our bilingual collections. I use student performance data from the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and reading level data from classroom teachers to differentiate our shared readings, create literature circles and examine and critically analyse texts, clips and oral stories originating from other cultures.
The BPS Library Blog provides links for students and parents to extend their learning about topics covered in Library. Newsletter articles promote the value and importance of reading to parents, including infographics that clearly demonstrate the differences in not reading, compared to reading just 20 minutes each day. Finally, reading research is pushed to staff via email to promote to students and parents at interview time. Discussions about these are undertaken informally to promote a culture of reading and learning amongst teachers as well.
‘ETL402 Children’s literature across the curriculum’ has provided many opportunities for continuing professional development with teachers. The readings, assessments and tasks undertaken throughout ETL402 further emphasise a balanced Library Program and the importance of reading and developing the collection to ensure an effective spread of resources across genres and priorities.
They also provide hard data to support the use of a wide variety and different types of quality literature for different purposes. Being able to refer to research data and studies makes leading literacy development easy. It is difficult to argue with proven results and I have found that teachers are more willing to try new approaches (for example, using music to teach figurative language), use unfamiliar texts and resources and develop their pedagogy further when provided examples of the resources and opportunities for integrating them in the classroom or combining them with Library programming. Again, results from the recent Teacher Librarian Survey revealed that ‘Requesting literacy advice from the Teacher Librarian’ was the most highly rated library service provided.
These results are heartening as I can see that the Teacher Librarian role is focusing more on the role of information expert and less on information administration. Both roles are important but development of the former is a major shift in attitude change that is required for school libraries to flourish.
The next step is to transform the Library into a multi-functional space – the Information Hub.
References
The next step is to transform the Library into a multi-functional space – the Information Hub.
References
- Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2007). Assessment in guided inquiry. In Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century (pp. 111-131). Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.
- SurveyMonkey. (2015). Teacher Librarian Evaluation 2015 - Cosentino, Bexley Public School. Retrieved from https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-X9RB2ZJ2/
- Todd, R. (2010). Curriculum Integration. Victoria, Australia: ACER Press