Working Together

 The end of the week is here, and we've had a marvelous week of lessons and activities in the library. But the end of one week always means ensuring everything is ready for the next week. The library is never "not busy!"

Now that we have finished new policies, new procedures, introducing a contest and so on, it is time to start teaching students how to help themselves. We are also busy planning a parent's tea where we can discuss ways to create lifelong readers.

First, next week will begin some lessons on library searching points for nonfiction books, how to locate the books, and how to use a nonfiction book properly. Properly? What does that mean? Well, if you think back to the last nonfiction book you read (which might be a university textbook if you don't enjoy reading nonfiction), a nonfiction book can be read differently than a fiction story. There's the table of content, index, glossary, diagrams, maps, charts, tables, captions, and so much more in nonfiction, it helps to understand these parts in order to really get the most out of what you are reading. Therefore, we will start working on decoding the secrets of the nonfiction book with some of our students.

Our parent tea is in the planning stages, but we hope to have some of our Early Years and lower grade parents come for a talk about how to encourage reading as a fun past-time. Too often, we all get caught up in numbers, statistics, and lists that tell us where a child should be, what words they should know, and other dreary things. However, the single most important factor for reading success and improvement is ENJOYING reading. That's it. When a child enjoys reading, they will increase vocabulary. Their fluency and decoding skills will develop. Their imagination can be sparked, and reading level will go up. And, most importantly, they will be on their way to becoming lifelong readers. Our goal is to have a great introduction to this topic with our parents.