Reading Without Walls Challenge 2023: Work in Progress

RRW Challenge_2023 by zarah gagatiga

Reading and Library Promotion: Tangram and Books for Free

To kick off 2020, we have set up a reading and library promotions activity for the community. Books for Free and a Tangram play and display activity.

We get book donations from many agencies and generous people. We first offer these books to the community for free. Then we send them off to recipients far and wide!

Grant Snider's comic is inspiring. He has one made for New Year's where tangram puzzles were used to suggest possibilities, wonderment and trust to processes. Using it as base for the reading promotion, I set up envelopes for Tangram puzzles that anyone from the community can make. 

It is easy to do. Simply follow the Imagine - Play - Wonder structure ( a format I use for my workshops) and anyone can create art, stories and ideas! It is also a Makerspace activity if you think about it. And for students who need a brain break, they can play on the puzzles and learn at the same time.

To complete the display, I bring out books about puzzles and spatial thinking. I am positive that these books will be borrowed. Well, 4 out of 10 is the standard ratio.

Book Love: Red Books, Found Poetry and Blind Date With A Book

Library Bulletin Board: The IB Learner Profile and Recommended Books

Because we want to hit two birds with one stone, we combined the IB Learner Profile with book recommendations as our library bulletin board for this semester.

The IB Learner Profile are the core values of all IB authorized school world wide. These values are the qualities that IB School communities aspire to be. IB Learners (including teachers and staff) strive to be: Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Principled, Open-Minded, Caring, Risk-Takers, Balanced and Reflective.

Using the IB Learner Profile as theme for the bulletin board, we're able to remind ourselves of these values and our aspirations. Our context, being a Filipino school, the Beacon Academy is then rooted in the Filipino culture with a vision of a global and international education.

The IB Learner Profile permeates all aspect of the school, academics, school life, teaching and staff professional development as well as in its alumni and parent relations.

To further build on the development of these aspirations, us, in the library, thought of setting up the bulletin board into a reading recommendation services that has the IB Learner Profile as its anchors. The photo of our bulletin board, as shown above, has the ten IB Learner Profile and book covers of selected books that touch on each profile. We will regularly change the book covers, enjoining students, teachers and faculty to contribute.

A reading community learns. A learning community reads!

Easter Egg Hunt at the Library 2016

Found Easter Egg Cutouts

A week before our term break, I hid Easter egg cutouts in books shelved in our fiction collection. I then sent an email to the community about the annual Easter Egg Hunt at the library. This morning, my avid readers went looking for books and found the eggs! 

They borrowed the books (which will add up to their book quota- every grade level has a required book number pegged for the batch to borrow) to read over the quarter break. These are books I selected. I am excited to hear reader feedback when they return the books to the library using the book review bookmarks. I have information to use in selecting and acquiring titles. I get to know my young readers' changing tastes in reading materials and topics. I can plan more programs that meet their reading needs.

This is a reading program I subtly introduce to teens with the hope of engaging them deeper into books and reading. The fiction books I have chosen are titles that I think would supplement and enrich their academic endeavors. Reading fiction may be light and leisurely, but it is an engagement with the book creators and the text.

What about content area reading? There is another approach for that. What about the reluctant readers? The ones who struggle below their comprehension level? That can be addressed through individualized and differentiated instruction, thus, the school library's reading program and services must follow through this strategy. And this kind of reading program is in my To Do list at work.

Happy reading everyone!

Library Reading Promotion For Christmas 2015

In keeping with a Christmas tradition, our library is giving away candy canes for book borrowers. Sweets are treats for teens who read and for those who are reluctant to read. What I do is to spread books and display them on tables and open spaces in the library. Showing the book's cover is visually appealing. Put a sweet candy beside it doubles the appeal. Since the week started, my staff at the circulation desk has been busy dispensing books and sweets at the same time.

This promotional strategy sounds like the carrot on a stick technique, but, it keeps the circulation stats moving and teens reading.

I take note of reading responses as we go along. There is this grade 10 student who wants to study in the UK so he printed out a list of the Best British Books of the 20th century. The poor kid came to me for help, asking how to start a reading list. While the titles are a combination of easy and light reading, there is also stuff there that is pretty serious literature. So, I cautioned the boy and started him off with enjoyable reads. I recommended Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and a Gaiman novella. He finished each book by the said author in a month. He is now reading the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. I look forward to his transition to the different genres as motivated by his own choices.

Speaking of reading responses, we also launched the Christmas Reading Passport two weeks ago. It is easy to do.

1. Students get a reading passport.

2. The reading passport is designed to encourage students to read four books on the themes of hope, peace, joy and love. There are four questions to be answered, one for each book. This way, students are guided on their book choices. Recommended reads, a list of books about the themes are sent out via email lists to everyone.

3. The passport and the books are taken home over the long holiday break.

4. Students come back after the break with the passports filled out. They submit this to the library staff.

5. They get a token from the library.

Now, what do I do with the filled out reading passports? I use it to inform me of what books our teens enjoy and don't enjoy at all. I use the information form the passport as basis for acquisition purchases, as well as developing more book lists that would encourage and interest them to read. My next project is to do a compilation of the Best Reads by Griffins Who Read. This is like a book buddy journal where short reviews are put together. I envision this as a guide for incoming high school students who are charting their reading journeys. As their school librarian, I am their willing reading companion.

Reading Promotion: I KNow What You Read Last Summer

I Know What You Read Last Summer, a book guessing game I set up last week as the library's reading promotion activity for the months of August and September.

Pompom Bookmarks and Book Covers

The green monochrome pompom is Zoe's. Mine is the multicolored pompom bookmark.

  Always on the look out for library and reading promotion ideas, I stumbled upon a DIY pompom bookmark in Pinterest. Following the link ans instructions, I tried it at home. Success!

It's very easy to make the pompom bookmark. It only takes ten minutes. Trimming off the edges need careful snips to achieve a fluffy round pompom. I'll come up with ten pompom bookmarks. When school opens in January 2013, the bookmarks will be our tokens for early book returners and borrowers. Let's see if the teens like the give-aways.

Another new thing we're doing at the library is the use of book stands that show off the covers of books when displayed. The spine only shows the book title. For media induced clients, just reading the title won't work. Book covers are visual stimuli.

Take Time to Read

Teachers will always say they have no time to read. Some alibi, right?

I'd rather take the excuse, so many books, so little time to read because it means that the interest to read is present in the person saying so. We are in a day and age when reading, like library use, needs promotion.

Promote reading by creating interactive library bulletin boards and displays. Use Twitter and FB to post quick reading responses on books read. Regularly send out short but substantial emails to the faculty of new titles and recommended reads. Below are five titles from our library's Teacher Resources.

1. Why the Universe is the Way it Is? by Hugh Ross - examines the complexities of the universe and ties them with the Scriptures. More philosophy than physics, it would lead readers to reflect on the purpose of humanity.

2.The Excellent 11: Qualities Teachers and Parents Use to Motivate, Inspire and Educate Chidlren by Ron Clark - is intended to inspire teachers, parents and allied professionals who work with children. Eleven stories that speak of the essential 11s are featured in the book.

3. Positive Discipline: A Teacher's A-Z Guide - The title says it all :-)

4. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - Our brains are capable to do both kids of thinking as identified by Kahneman, but when to use fast thinking and slow thinking is the highlight of the book.

5. A New Culture of Learning by Douglas Thomas - a book on educational technology for today's teacher on instructing and facilitating learning to the net generation.

Library Bulletin Board: Start of School

This is how the library bulletin board looks like at our school. There's a low sofa below it where students were seated at the time I took the photo thus, the big head room at the top.

Anyways, I wanted to drum up the idea of a library for all but with respect for everyone using the library, including the staff, of course. So the left frame says it all: The library is a shared space. Students are free to write on the thought bubbles.

The middle frame is a cloud tag of  the school community's principles, belief's and ethos.

The right frame has the library's motto: A learning community reads. A reading community learns. Featured for this month is a book review of one of the students in grade 12 on Dianne Wynn Jones' book, Howl's Moving Castle. It's a review that connects the book with the animated movie by Hayao Miyazaki. Every month, the library will post reviews and recommended reads from the community.