 | Make your library media center an attractive, warm,
comfortable place for students. Fill it with wisely selected books at a variety of reading
levels and to suit a variety of interests so that students will want to visit, find a good
book, and get comfy enough to read it.
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| Encourage your students to be independent in your
library, any library, or every library. Let them share with you all of the strategies they
use to select a good book to read. Share your personal strategies with students. Practice
the Five Finger Rule with younger
students and promote interest or topic seeking with older students. Insure that they will
select a book that is just right for them!
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| Assist teachers with classroom book selection and
encourage them to select 20 - 40 books for their room to supplement their class library.
Keep in mind readability, authors, themes, genres, etc. Demonstrate the patron catalog and
the role it plays in selection of appropriate books.
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| Promote use of a research model such as the Big 6 or IPSD #204's (intermediate/primary). Have a variety of non
fiction research materials for all reading levels. Following a process model,
especially one that is based on questions, promotes critical reading for understanding and
comprehension (Harvey, 2000).
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| Provide online as well as paper resources for leveling
books such as Bernice Wright's Website, Leveled
Reading Collections, Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children by
Irene C. Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell, and the additional
resources associated with this website.
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| Flexibly schedule your LMC so that you can support the
balanced literacy approach and other areas of the curriculum as it is convenient for
classroom teachers. Get yourself a "Daily Planner" with each day broken down in
15 minute blocks. At-A-Glance
is a good paper planner to use as it gives you complete all day coverage seven to seven,
as well as four columns for any notes you might have to jot down from lesson planning
ideas to places you need to be. You can also use an electronic planner like Life Balance, your
Palm, or develop your own with a calendar program.
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| Meet monthly with grade level teams and plan lessons that
incorporate all of the literacies from reading to information to technology. At these
planning meetings update teachers on new books and materials, both for students and
professionals, that support all aspects involved in the teaching of reading. Use a simple planning sheet to record needs,
lessons, support materials, etc.
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| Meet monthly with the special area teachers; art,
music, and phys ed. There are many ways you can support their programs in the LMC. Try a
soccer book display when soccer is the curricular area being taught in the gym. This may
motivate those athletic nonreaders to become interested. Provide books for classroom use
(biographies of artists or musicians) or for students who are excused from athletic
activities to read during class.
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| Read all professional journals that your school
subscribes to as they come in. Scan the tables of contents. Note those articles that are
significant to curriculum and most importantly, to reading approaches. Copy the contents
pages with your notations and distribute to all staff. The rest is up to them!
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| Build reading lists or bibliographies of books in the LMC
based on themes that are being discussed/taught in classrooms: Wolves,
Planets, Inventions, Second
Grade Series Books, etc. Each month highlight a list with a display.
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| Provide bibliographies and/or inservice to staff members
on patron catalog use so that teachers can gather materials that help with "word
work." Books that have rhyming text, focus on adjectives, emphasize onomatopoeia,
demonstrate the six traits of writing.
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| Provide suggestions to teachers of books that will serve
as models for writing techniques: A Collector of Moments by Quint Buchholz, Zoom
and Re-Zoom by Istvan Banyai, Baloney by Jon Scieszka, Window by
Jeanie Baker, etc.
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| If your circulation system allows it, print out a monthly
report for classroom teachers showing them the number of books checked out by each student
in their class. This information will let them know those students who have not checked
out many books from the LMC (perhaps having difficulty with selection or in the case of a
kindergartner, they may be afraid to walk to the LMC alone), those who are checking out
more books then they can possibly read (perhaps having difficulty in selecting the just
right book for them), and those students who are making appropriate selections (checking
out a reasonable number of books for their reading ability).
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| Enlist the help of your reading specialist who can help
you to work one on one with students needing assistance with book selection. Perhaps a
common time can be scheduled for a select group of students to visit the LMC and receive
individualized assistance in book selection.
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