Monday, March 28, 2016

Display Ideas

Hello,

When you walk into a library, how do you feel? Do you feel calm, comforted to see so many books and know that there is much to choose from or do you feel intimidated and just grab something quickly or even turn around and walk out? I always loved to see so many books available and felt at peace when walking into a library. I was excited to see what they had in THIS library that other libraries I had been into might not have had. However, many children actually are intimidated by so many books to choose from. What can we do to help these children?

One of the best ways to help children is to make smaller displays regularly of books that they might find interesting, or displays to support your curriculum. When children see displays that are attractive, they are drawn to them and it is much easier to choose a book from a small sample than to try to find the same book on a big shelf. You can also take the time to walk around with a child and help them find the books they want or need.

As children get older, you can start teaching them to use the card catalog (if you still have one) or the computer to find the subject or title they want. Believe it or not, they don’t automatically know how to do this and need to be taught.

I am getting ready to take down a display we had of our Iditarod books we put up in early March. I’m planning three more displays to have in the library and my display case. One will be on Earth Day, one will be on Robotics, and one will be to celebrate Beverly Cleary’s 100th birthday coming on April 12. You can show a very recent clip from ‘Good Morning America’ to your students or find others to show. Check out YouTube for other ideas to promote Beverly Cleary and her books.

I hope you had a great spring vacation.

Audrey

Currently reading:
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
A New Song by Jan Karon (Book 5 of the Mitford series)
Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery

Monday, March 14, 2016

Biographies

Hello!

What does your biography section look like? Do you have a lot of the Childhood of Famous Americans series and not much else? Are they beat up and unattractive?

Check out the biography section and see what grade levels are represented. When you study science, make sure you have science biographies. Some schools have large sports biography sections. It can be hard to know WHO to put in the biography section. Here are some guidelines and then some suggestions.

Guideline 1: Make sure you have a number of presidents of the United States represented. I would hope that most (if not all) of them are represented.

Guideline 2: Check that there are biographies on all reading levels, even beginning readers.

Guideline 3: Look for biographies on people who are good role models and who will be known throughout the years. Think about Malala, Mother Teresa, Mark Zuckerman, Bill Gates, etc. It may be that your community has someone who is important. There might be a biography written about them.

Guideline 4: Sports people are fine, but many of them are short term as far as popularity goes. If you have a lot of sports biographies, you may need to weed often and purchase often to keep it updated.

Guideline 5: There are sets of Christian biographies that focus on Christian leaders. We put the Trailblazer series in our biography section. Also look for the Heroes of the Faith series. The ones we have in our library are white with a maroon strip at the top. People included in this set are John Bunyan, Fanny Crosby, Jim Elliot, Billy Graham, C. S. Lewis, David Livingstone, Martin Luther, D. L. Moody, Samuel Morris, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon, Corrie ten Boom, Mother Teresa, Sojourner Truth, and John Wesley. There are more, but this list will give you some ideas of what the series is like.

Guideline 6: Check to see if you have biographies on Ellen G. White. There may also be biographies on other SDA leaders to include, too.

Suggestions: If you need to update your lower reading level biographies, I would urge you to consider a set we have gotten this year. Brad Meltzer has begun to write biographies for young readers. He started writing them after going to the store with his young daughter and finding lots of ‘princess’ shirts and clothing. He began to wonder where the strong women role models were for his daughter. When he didn’t see what he wanted, he began to write them. His series is titled “Ordinary People Change the World”. Titles so far are “I Am Amelia Earhart, I am Lucille Ball, I am Abraham Lincoln, I am Rosa Parks, I am Albert Einstein, I am Jackie Robinson, I am Helen Keller, and I am Martin Luther King, Jr.” Coming next September will be “I am George Washington, and I am Jane Goodall.” The illustrations are cartoonish and there are speech bubbles in the text, but the information is solid and our first and second graders love them. I have also given them to lower readers in third and even fourth grade.



Another set we got is published by Scholastic and is called Rookie Biographies.




I hope you enjoy your biographies and consider updating them from time to time.

Have a great Spring Vacation!

Audrey

Currently reading:
The Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse
The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon (Book 3 of the Mitford series)

Monday, March 7, 2016

Ideas to Promote Use of the Library

Hello!

A few years ago I found some ideas for encouraging reading that sounded pretty easy and fun. Some of these ideas are things that you could have parents or students set up for you which also promotes ‘buy in’ to reading. I found these ideas in some of my library journals and books.

Enjoy them. If you have other ideas, please let me know and I’ll add them to this list.


1. Inside some gift cards these days there is a little cell that can be used to record a message. You can use this technology to do ‘book talks’. Print a small cover of the book and place the cell with the recorded message behind the cover to make your own book talks. Students just push the button and hear a short book talk about the book. You could let students record book talks for books. A great book report idea! You can buy just sound chips from various resources if you are interested.

2. Signage for libraries can be very expensive, but you can make your own with a large coffee can, a yardstick, pebbles or rocks, spray paint, and paper. Spray the outside of the coffee can and both sides of the yardstick. Fill the can partway with the pebbles or rocks. Attach a sign to one end of the yardstick and stick the other end into the pebbles. Put these types of sign on table or shelving or wherever works in your library. These can be changed easily when needed.

3. Have a hard time getting your boys to read? Try what one school did. They took pictures of the adult males on campus reading a book and made a bulletin board titled “Real Men Read Books”. This really increased interest in reading and the boys began asking the men about the books they were reading. What if you are a small school and don’t have many adult males on staff? Use pastors, parents, or older siblings. I would advise that you have these males hold books from your library, possibly books that they enjoyed as a young person.

4. Encourage reading by using vendor’s catalogs. Vendors’ catalogs have small pictures of the covers of their books. Cut out all the pictures of books that the library owns or just books that you feel would be appropriate, laminate them and glue them to clothes pins or large paper clips. They can be used for bookmarks, genre sorts, library skills games or whatever you can think of. Don’t have vendor’s catalogs? Try using the book jacket. I usually cover the book jacket in plastic and affix to the book. But if you don’t use those book jackets, cut the cover off, then laminate and hang with clothes pins along a line in your library to call attention to the books and promote them.

5. One school had a Junior Prom Etiquette check day. Students were invited to bring their lunches to the library and different situations were reenacted such as introducing their date to their parents, table manners, and tips for awkward situations. We might not have the same situation, but our students can still profit from learning more about manners. Showcase books on manners and etiquette and have students act out etiquette tips and situations.

6. If your school allows students to use their cell phones or tablets, try using QR codes. You can type a book report or record a sound byte for a book, then attach a QR code to the URL. Readers can just aim their phones at the QR code and get the information. You may have seen these in magazines where an advertisement has a QR code to direct you to their websites. If you don’t know how to do this, let your older children figure it out. Once you’ve done a few, it will be very easy to do.


I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

Currently Reading:
The Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse
The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon (Book 3 of the Mitford series)