Monday, March 31, 2014

Library Skills


Greetings!

Even if you have a very small library, you should be teaching library skills to your students. The good thing is that they don’t take a lot of time to teach and you are probably doing most of them anyway! Here are some library skills that students need to know.

HOW TO USE YOUR SCHOOL OR CLASSROOM LIBRARY
Your library may be organized a bit differently than other libraries and students need to know how to locate books in your school or classroom library. In my classroom I had books organized in baskets according to genre or author depending on the book. I had a basket for Berenstain Bears books, one for Magic Schoolbus books, and so forth. I labeled the baskets and students could easily return books to the correct basket. (Whether they actually DID return the books correctly is another story, but they could do it if so inclined!)

HOW TO USE A REGULAR LIBRARY
Keep in mind that students may also go to their local public library to find books and they need to know how to use the Dewey Decimal Classification System.
This year I reviewed Dewey with students in grades 3 and up and began teaching it to the first and second graders. I use a system with finger motions to help them remember the kinds of books that are found in each Dewey numbered section. I also made it into a bookmark for students to use and study. I trim construction paper to fit the copier and copy this onto construction paper. I like to use bright colors for this.

HOW TO BROWSE AND LOCATE BOOKS
Students rarely know how to replace a book on the shelf, so we teach them to use a shelf marker. The marker is put on the shelf like a place holder for the book while the student is looking through the book to see if he or she wants to check that book out.

HOW TO CHECK BOOKS OUT AND CHECK THEM BACK IN

What is your procedure for checking books out and then returning books? Make sure students know what the procedure is and have them practice if they need it. If you have students check books out themselves or check them in, make sure they know the procedure.

HOW TO USE THE CARD CATALOG OR THE LIBRARY CATALOG
Make sure students know how to use the card catalog or library catalog. If your library is automated, you need to teach them how to search the library catalog.

HOW TO CARE FOR BOOKS
Teach students to use a bookmark rather than lay an open book down on its pages. This is not good for the spine of the book and reduces the life of the book. I tell students that if they do this to their own books, that is their business, but since the library books do not belong to them, they need to use a bookmark.
Also teach students to handle books with clean hands, not to mark in them, and other ways to be careful with books.

THE PARTS OF A BOOK
The basic parts of a book are the spine, the covers, and the pages. You can go further and teach the title page, the dedication page, the publisher page, and I like to point out the end pages particularly when they are colorful and contribute to the inside of the book.

WHAT AN AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR DO
We teach students about what authors and illustrators do and students here are beginning to ask for books by a particular author and sometimes they recognize the artwork of a certain illustrator. You never know if this might encourage kids to write or illustrate books when they grow up.

HOW TO USE A DICTIONARY, ENCYCLOPEDIA, INDEX OR GLOSSARY

This is likely part of your language arts classes, but if not, it is something that students need to know how to do.

All of these library skills are life skills that will be used for the rest of their lives which makes them valuable to learn. I hope you have a great week.
Audrey

Monday, March 17, 2014

Genre Shelving

Greetings!

I recently read an article in the March/April issue of Library Media Connection about a school that decided to go to genre shelving for their fiction books. This librarian had some good reasons as to why she decided to go that route and I began to think about this a little bit further.

Genre shelving is where you put books of a kind together. The Historical Fiction books would all be shelved together, the Mystery books together, the Adventure books together.
Some of the reasons this is a good idea include:

• Many students really do not grasp the concept of organizing books by author’s last name. Many do not even know the author’s last name.
• The other Dewey sections have books of a kind organized together, (the science books are together, the math books, and so on), and students seem to think that this also applies to the fiction section.
• Students who like stories about horses would find them all together and can easily find more to read.
• Some say that the library is used more when genre shelving is used over the traditional Dewey 813.

I talked with my library assistant about this idea and we discussed the pros and cons of this in our library. We already knew the pros from the article and came up with our own list of cons.

• We are working to teach the Dewey system to the students so they will become more independent in other libraries. I tell the children that if they like to read books about training dogs then they will always find them in 636.7 in any library. So this is a skill that will be helpful in the future.
• When students leave our school, they will be back in a library that uses Dewey, so they will have to learn to use Dewey anyway.
• We feel that putting books of a kind together may hamper the discovery of ANOTHER type of book that students might find while searching for the type they want. Students often read only one type of book and ignore all other genres. Genre shelving would encourage this even more.
• The genres that the article mentioned were “Paranormal, Dystopian, Fantasy, Girl, Guy-books guys like, Mysteries, Real life, Classics, Humor, and Historical fiction. You will already know that the paranormal, dystopian, and fantasy genres would not be in our library anyway. Most of our books are Real life, so that one was also out. We don’t like the idea of separating ‘girl’ reads from ‘guy’ reads. Girls will usually read books about guys, but guys might resist reading a book about girls. Separating them would only highlight a section of books for the boys to avoid. So basically that leaves Classics, Humor, and Historical fiction.

Yet the students still come and ask for an adventure book or a mystery book. We have taught them how to use the computer library catalog and that often works, but still. . . We finally hit upon a solution that we feel would work in our library. We will purchase genre stickers to place on the different genres that are most requested in our library.

About two years ago we had a number of classes searching for historical fiction for book reports, so at the time we bought genre stickers for that particular genre and marked about 200 of the books for quick choosing. We also told the students that there were many more and if they had a question about a particular book, they could check with the librarian or their teacher to see if it would be acceptable for the assignment. So that genre is obviously one that we will continue using. Other genres we will mark will be Classics, Adventure, Horses, Dogs, Cats, Mystery, and Holiday. Then we will wait and see if there are others that reveal themselves as students ask for them.

We feel that this idea will help solve the genre problem, and still maintain the Dewey system, and the chance that students will happen upon another type of book while searching for a particular genre.

Have a great week. I’m off to order genre stickers!
Audrey

Monday, March 10, 2014

Cookbooks for Kids

Greetings!
One of my hobbies is cooking. I enjoy trying new recipes and tweaking ones that I regularly use. It seems that food and cooking has become more popular in the last ten years or so and has given rise to a couple of TV networks and cookbooks galore. Recently two different television cooking competition shows had child chefs competing for prizes.

COOKBOOKS
We have a great chance to introduce students to the joy of cooking for themselves and their families simply by placing cookbooks in our libraries for students to check out and use at home.
I really like cookbooks for children. I especially like when the directions are written simply and clearly with pictures to illustrate the process. Here are a few that we have at Rogers.

Paula Deen and other celebrity chefs have written cookbooks for children. These two have been quite popular at our school. Paula Deen’s My First Cookbook and Paula Deen’s Cookbook for the Lunch-Box Set.

The Children’s Step-By-Step Cookbook is one that I particularly like. The illustrations are colorful photographs and the directions for each recipe are very easy to follow. You can see that my copy is mended and this is the best of two copies that I have!

If you want vegetarian cookbooks, here are two that are just for kids. Cooking with Herb the Vegetarian Dragon, The Jumbo Vegetarian Cookbook, (in the next photo) and Kids Can Cook.

The Sleepover Cookbook, The Ultimate Kid-approved Cookbook, and Tasty School Lunches are all great options, as well.

COOKING CONTEST
One of our classrooms has a number of aspiring chefs and a couple of months ago they wanted to hold a cooking or baking contest like they have seen on TV. After a lot of planning and scheduling, they held their Cupcake Bake-off here last Friday. They came up with a rubric for the judges to use regarding flavor, creativity, frosting constancy, and more. The whole class divided into teams and got baking in our Commons area. This happens to be right outside my office area, so I had to smell cupcakes baking all morning. Near the end of the morning I went to the office to get my mail and was handed a judging form and happily had to taste the cupcakes.

The kids had a great time and learned quite a bit along the way.

FOOD MAGAZINES FOR KIDS
I wondered if there were any food magazines for kids and went searching online. Can you believe it? There are three. Chop, Chop, Yum for Kids, and Ingredient. I ordered all three to try them out to see if they are something I could recommend and put in the library. I got Ingredient right away along with the back issues I ordered and I really like it.

The January/February 2014 issue has
• an article about clementine oranges
• a short history of the scurvy problem sailors had in the 1700’s
• New York City’s attempt to ban soda
• sesame seeds and where they come from
• traveling to Alaska and the experiences with wildlife and also the food
• a history of chewing gum
• a young chef (age 13) and her newly released cookbook
• the nose and the science of smelling and tasting
• the subtitle of Ingredient is “a magazine for kids curious about food”
• there are recipes, but they do not fill the magazine. This issue has four recipes.

If you are looking for a food magazine for kids, you might ask for a sample issue and try this one out.

I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

PS. I went to pull out all the children’s cookbooks to photograph for you, and had not realized how many we have. I DID NOT show you all that we have, but less than half of what we have. It is a little bit embarrassing, but I justified myself with the fact that we have a lot of students. I want to encourage you to have a few children's cookbooks in your library if you don’t already have some. Now, I really do not need any more children’s cookbooks, but if you have one that you think I might like, I’m sure I can talk myself into getting another!

Monday, March 3, 2014

Leveled books

Greetings,

A question that has been asked of me is how to level the books in the library or how should the leveled books be identified.

First, I don’t think that the books in the library should be leveled. I feel that the library is a place for discovery and if a student is limited to those books on his or her level, his or her interests may not be addressed. At our school there is one first grade boy who come to me every week almost without fail to ask for a book about ‘how to make’ something. “I want a book on how to make a cell phone.” “I want a book on how to make a rocket.” I want a book on how to make ___________.” Every week I get this question. He is interested in making things. The fact that I don’t have a book on how to make a cell phone does not deter him. He goes on to another topic. This child will invent something wonderful someday.

I also read about another primary grade child that was very interested in learning about ham radio. He found a book that was quite difficult for him to read, but he actually read the book though with some help with the big words. He learned a lot about ham radio, and his reading and vocabulary improved greatly.

If either of these children were limited to the books he could actually read, he would be bored and discover that the library is not a place to find what he wanted to learn about.

Now, I know that there is a place for leveled books, but I think that should be in the classroom. If your ‘school library’ is also your classroom library, try to find a separate place or shelf for the leveled books. Try to keep them separate from the library books. To make it easy for your students to locate their level, put a white sticker on the spine of the book with the number of the level. It will be easy to put all the 1’s together, the 2’s, and so on. You might think that colored stickers would work fine, but I see two minor problems with that. I can imagine children asking over and over “Which color am I supposed to be reading?” Yes, you could make a small sign to indicate which color goes with each level. But what about the student that is at a lower level from his or her peers? She is reading from the blue level (and everyone can see it) while the others are at the yellow level. A white sticker is less obvious and the written number instantly identifies the level.

One suggestion I have as to placement of the stickers whether you use white or different colors is to have them all in the same general area. If you don’t have spine labels on these books, put the sticker on the spine one inch from the bottom of the spine. The reason for the space of one inch is that books tend to become worn on the bottom of the spine and the stickers will also become tattered much sooner. If they are one inch higher, they will stay nice for a long time.

If you do have spine labels on these books already, then put the leveled stickers just above the spine label. This way they will all be nice and neat on the shelf and very easy to find.

These are just my opinions and suggestions. If you have found a way to accomplish this that works well for you, I would say to just keep doing what works. Don't fix it if it isn't broken.

Have a great week.

Audrey