Encouraging Children to Read via Displays

We have a selection of books on display at both schools. The selection changes every few weeks, with the season, a holiday, a special celebration, student interest detected by my assistants, or any special topic we want to promote. We are trying to catch a reluctant reader's eye or steer students to new ideas to them. It is possible, or even likely, that they don't know many classics and that makes a very good display. Another idea is to display award winners. We have many thousands of good choices in both libraries.

Currently, there is a display of Halloween books in both libraries. The students are most definitely interested in them. We get many requests every day and it is very convenient to point toward the book displays. Kudos to Mrs. Drope and Mr. Mandru for the hard work they do to make these displays.

Illinois Bluestem Award at Prairieview

This week at Prairieview, I introduced the books nominated for the Bluestem award to every class. This award is determined by third, fourth, and fifth grade voters all over the state of Illinois. It is a very good match for Prairieview. The books are nominated by a teacher/librarian committee which pays close attention to suggestions from participants. They select a wide variety of books, subject and reading level-wise. However, all the books are appropriated for the participating grade levels. One might think I would grow bored introducing the eighteen titles we have available in our collection to sixteen different groups, but I did not. The list is very interesting and appealing this year and I intend to read every single one of the books on it. Our students need to have read at least four of the nominees to participate in the voting, which will occur in February. We encourage them to read or listen to as many as possible and teachers help out by reading one or two to their classes. We also ask all the students who can to get the books at the public libraries. All of the librairies participate and have multiple copies of the books. We cannot afford to spend the majority of our budget, just on this, no matter how fun it is.

At Ide, we do the Monarch Award program, which is intended for grades K through 3. At Lakeview, they do the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award. This is for grades 4 through 8. We do have many of the nominees for this one available at Prarieview, as well, but we do not emphasize it. These books tend to more for the older students. Students who have read three of these nominees will be able to vote at school in February.

Processing books at Elizabeth Ide

Mrs. Drope and I have to go through many steps to get new books on our shelves.

First we have to select and purchase them. I read reviews, consider teacher and student requests, consider our curriculum, and try to keep the collection in balance with up-to-date, appealing books. After the books arrive there are many steps to processing including, but not limited to, checking in the order, property stamping, pasting pockets, and filling out some basic information about each book. Mrs. Drope handles this. Then, I do the cataloging. It is important to get proper information into our automated catalog about each book. This helps the patrons to find what they are looking for. When the cataloging is complete, I print the barcodes and pocket labels. Mrs. Drope finishes the processing by placing the labels on the books, adding spine labels for arranging the books on the shelves, and putting spine protecting tape or plastic covers on each book. In the end, we have a well-organized, easily used library. Both the students and the staff are pretty specific about what they want most of the time. We strive to meet their needs.

Automated Catalog at Ide

After an introduction for whole classes last week, our second graders are now having "private" lessons on our automated library catalog. Groups of four meet with me and each one gets a turn to search for whatever he or she wants to look for. The others watch and they all learn from each other how to take advantage of our catalog. It will take me a few weeks to get through all the small groups in each class. With their confidence built, the children are eager to search more and more. The intent is to have them be competant users when they move on to third grade at Prairieview. It is wonderful to enable the students to take advantage of our well-rounded and comparatively large collections. They read more when they can find what they like. They learn more when they can find what they are curious about.

This catalog can be examined at home, as well. From our district website (http://www.ccsd66.org/), click on the appropriate building photo. When that page opens, scroll down to the boxed menu and click on library. Then the library page opens, scroll down to IPAC (Internet Public Access Catalog) and click on one of the boxes right underneath that. Then, you will be looking at the catalog page, just as it looks at that school. Have fun!