Teacher Librarian as Reading Cheerleader
My motivation for becoming a teacher-librarian was to become a reading cheerleader for students. I have always had a love of reading, and I wanted to instil that in my students. This is still true today, and my Masters has equipped me with more tools to successfully effect this outcome.
As I mentioned in my first blog post for ETL402, there are so many ways that literature can bring pleasure, including:
The most obvious way in which teacher-librarians can provide these experiences for children is by reading a variety of stories aloud to students in an engaging manner, and it is in this role that I saw teacher-librarians as reading cheerleaders at the beginning of my course.
Throughout the degree, particularly during ETL402, I was enlightened as to the abundance of ways we can open students up to the world of reading. One way of doing this is through having a variety of genres in the collection, so students have the opportunity to find a genre they enjoy and/or relate to. This is particularly important for teenagers, who disengage from reading at an alarming rate (Zipes, 2009). But simply having the genres in the collection isn’t enough. Strict selection criteria such as that recommended by ALIA/VCTL (2007) and Johnson (2009) ensure that the fiction in the collection is interesting, engaging and visually appealing to students, enticing them to pick up a book in the first place.
Teacher-librarians can also facilitate reading by introducing literature circles or book clubs to the school, encouraging students to discuss their thoughts on particular books and share their pleasure with others. Literature circles are small student-led groups where students select the same book to read. Students then discuss the book in the group, and present their results to the rest of the class (Lehman, 2007; McCall, 2010). They offer a way for students to participate in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books. It also gives students the opportunity to reshape and enhance their understanding as they construct meaning with other readers (Schlick-Noe & Johnson, 2004). Encouraging students to discuss books in this way can inspire them to continue talking about books with their friends independently, which in turn increases their enthusiasm for reading.
Literature can also be used to promote and extend other areas of the curriculum. My second assignment for ETL402 substantially extended my understanding of the potential literature has for meeting other curricular outcomes and increasing empathy for historical situations (Cornett, 2007). In my experiences as a casual teacher, particularly my block teaching Celebrations in 2010, I had already explored this potential somewhat, but I came away from that assignment with a number of new ideas about how to use literature in my teaching, which I look forward to doing in the future. It also solidified my belief that fiction as well as non-fiction should be selected to meet the needs of the curriculum (ALIA/ASLA, 2001).
The completion of ETL402 gave me a greater knowledge and understanding of what variety of literature is available for students today, and how I can utilise this diversity in my teaching. I have already begun to do this as a casual teacher, sharing with my students a number of different books I have purchased which I think they will both benefit from and enjoy.
Click below to read my case for Literary Learning.
As I mentioned in my first blog post for ETL402, there are so many ways that literature can bring pleasure, including:
- the pleasure of having one’s emotions evoked
- the pleasure of finding a mirror for oneself
- the pleasure of words themselves- the patterns their sounds can make
- the pleasure of escape- of stepping outside oneself
- the pleasure of the pictures and ideas that the words of texts evoke, allowing one to visualise people in places not seen before
- the pleasure of newness- of experiencing different kinds of stories or surprise within a story
- the pleasure of formula -repeating the comfortably familiar experiences (Nodleman and Reimer, 2003, pp.25-27)
The most obvious way in which teacher-librarians can provide these experiences for children is by reading a variety of stories aloud to students in an engaging manner, and it is in this role that I saw teacher-librarians as reading cheerleaders at the beginning of my course.
Throughout the degree, particularly during ETL402, I was enlightened as to the abundance of ways we can open students up to the world of reading. One way of doing this is through having a variety of genres in the collection, so students have the opportunity to find a genre they enjoy and/or relate to. This is particularly important for teenagers, who disengage from reading at an alarming rate (Zipes, 2009). But simply having the genres in the collection isn’t enough. Strict selection criteria such as that recommended by ALIA/VCTL (2007) and Johnson (2009) ensure that the fiction in the collection is interesting, engaging and visually appealing to students, enticing them to pick up a book in the first place.
Teacher-librarians can also facilitate reading by introducing literature circles or book clubs to the school, encouraging students to discuss their thoughts on particular books and share their pleasure with others. Literature circles are small student-led groups where students select the same book to read. Students then discuss the book in the group, and present their results to the rest of the class (Lehman, 2007; McCall, 2010). They offer a way for students to participate in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books. It also gives students the opportunity to reshape and enhance their understanding as they construct meaning with other readers (Schlick-Noe & Johnson, 2004). Encouraging students to discuss books in this way can inspire them to continue talking about books with their friends independently, which in turn increases their enthusiasm for reading.
Literature can also be used to promote and extend other areas of the curriculum. My second assignment for ETL402 substantially extended my understanding of the potential literature has for meeting other curricular outcomes and increasing empathy for historical situations (Cornett, 2007). In my experiences as a casual teacher, particularly my block teaching Celebrations in 2010, I had already explored this potential somewhat, but I came away from that assignment with a number of new ideas about how to use literature in my teaching, which I look forward to doing in the future. It also solidified my belief that fiction as well as non-fiction should be selected to meet the needs of the curriculum (ALIA/ASLA, 2001).
The completion of ETL402 gave me a greater knowledge and understanding of what variety of literature is available for students today, and how I can utilise this diversity in my teaching. I have already begun to do this as a casual teacher, sharing with my students a number of different books I have purchased which I think they will both benefit from and enjoy.
Click below to read my case for Literary Learning.
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