STANDARD 2: LITERACY AND READING
Candidates promote reading for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment. Candidates are aware of major trends in children's and young adult literature and select reading materials in multiple formats to support reading for information, reading for pleasure, and reading for lifelong learning. Candidates use a variety of strategies to reinforce classroom reading instruction to address the diverse needs and interests of all readers.
Candidates are familiar with a wide range of children’s, young adult, and professional literature in multiple formats and languages to support reading for information, reading for pleasure, and reading for lifelong learning.
I read a variety of children’s and young adult books to become familiar with the literature, then picked 3 for each age group and created book talk videos to promote them. Creating the book talks required that I familiarize myself with existing children’s and young adult literature and identify trends in the reading habits of each age group in order to encourage students to read for a variety of purposes. Prior to this program, I was not familiar with children’s literature beyond what I personally read as a child. Now I know what makes books appealing to children, and can point out trends I would not have been aware of before. For example, I did not realize how popular scary books are for older children. Knowing what children like to read makes me more capable of building a library collection they will use to read for pleasure reading. Studies have shown that when students read books they pick out for themselves and enjoy, they succeed better in the school and later in life.
Candidates use a variety of strategies to promote leisure reading and model personal enjoyment of reading in order to promote habits of creative expression and lifelong reading.
When I was working at Ardrey Kell, we had a school-wide “Drop Everything And Read” program that was 15 minutes every day when all students and staff read. We used this time to provide students time to read what they wanted, rather than what was required in class. Students also observed their teachers and other school staff reading, setting an example that reading can be enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the students went along with this program. Having dedicated time to read and being able to read material of their choice (we saw a lot of graphic novel and magazine circulation) seemed to get even reluctant readers to participate. This program was based on the research from Krashen that shows free voluntary reading is often better at increasing reading ability when paired with direct instruction.
Candidates demonstrate the ability to develop a collection of reading and information materials in print and digital formats that support the diverse developmental, cultural, social, and linguistic needs of P-12 students and their communities.
I had to create a Collection Development Plan in LIS 653. This collection development required me to examine an existing school library collection to determine whether it met the needs of the students, and what needed to change. The plan included updating nonfiction to meet curriculum needs for classes taught at the school, and updating fiction to appeal to the school’s diverse student body. I learned how to consider school demographics and educational needs when developing a library collection. I also learned to take into account diverse perspectives when developing fiction collections for students to read for personal enjoyment. Research and my own experience has shown that students read more when they have access to books with characters they can connect to. Adding diverse fiction did show an increase in fiction checkouts .
Candidates collaborate with classroom teachers to reinforce a wide variety of reading instructional strategies to ensure P-12 students are able to create meaning from text.
Group lesson plan rewrite from LIS 654
This lesson already included the use of a graphic organizer with one text. We built on this by using a similar graphic organizer to examine a story from their family history, and then went further to have students share their family stories with the class. Our group expanded on the reading instructional strategies already in the lesson to add real-world connections to enhance student understanding. We’d talked in class about how to help teachers improve teaching inquiry, reading skills, and information literacy through “nudging” and not pushing, so this was both an exercise in collaboration/communication and reading instruction. In this case, we were using nudging strategies similar to those mentioned in an article we read by Kristin Fontichiaro, by having students share their thoughts and interpretations, and having students make the connection between their learning in class and their own real-world experiences.
Fontichiaro, K. (2009). Nudging towards Inquiry: re-envisioning existing research projects. School Library Monthly,26(1), 17-16.