With our science fiction and humour books now sporting snazzy spine labels, but still shelved A-Z, I thought it was time to survey the students about whether they thought shelving by genre was a good idea. I talked with our six Yr5/6 classes (172 students) and then gave them a very short questionnaire.
Off to a good start! Interestingly four of the five who said "no" mentioned issues with understanding books.
I wish my book recommendation powers were greater but this result reflects how little time I get with classes in the library. The power of the series reigns supreme but the interesting results for me were those for author and genre. Even with our fiction collection currently shelved A-Z, so that authors are readily found, selecting by author ranked around the same as selecting by genre. I will be doing another survey later in the year and it will be interesting to see the impact of shelving by genre on these figures.
17% of our students reported that they didn't find it easy to choose a book to read. The main reason given was that there were "too many books".
So there you go - overwhelming support for shelving by genre. I told the students that if they wanted it I would do it, so on Monday morning I will make the changes and give science fiction and humour their own sections. We will continue to shelve most of the fiction A-Z and every three weeks we will add a new genre. This makes it manageable for me, although I must admit I wish I could do it all sooner.
Last week I met with two of our senior management team to discuss our e-reading trial. I had heard that we were looking to bring iPads into the school and given the benefits of the bigger screen we agreed to postpone the e-reading trial until they arrived (hopefully next term). This makes sense but I must admit that I'm not a patient person and I hate having to wait!
Another topic we discussed was how to measure whether the iPads make a difference to students' reading. While the studies I have seen so far have measured improvements in attitude the senior managers felt that we should also try to assess improvements in reading level. They also questioned whether we are able to know what reading level the e-books are. These are two areas I will be looking into.
More research
Thanks again to the library listserv another interesting article about e-reading was brought to my attention - Middle school boys who are reluctant readers value reading more after using e-readers. I think an interesting point is that reluctant readers "liked other students not knowing their reading level or choice of book". The ability of an e-reader to enable anonymity around book choice is something I hadn't considered but I can see how this would be important to struggling students whose books may look small and babyish compared to those of more able students.
New technology for the library
The introduction of the new iPad and subsequent drop in price of the iPad2 meant that I was able to purchase an iPad2 for the library. Combined with an Apple TV I am hoping teachers will take the opportunity to occasionally show an e-book on the TV during their library time. I have loaded up several Dr Seuss apps and start tomorrow. Yay!
by
MyTudut
Last year, for the first time, we continued lending over the term holidays. When this was a success I contemplated the next step - lending over the summer holidays. I read Summer Slump & Holiday Reading on the Services to Schools website. Here is a quote from the site that surprised me:
"One piece of NZ research in a Decile 1 school found that some students reading at below-average levels suffered a 5.8 month summer reading slide".
In the recommended reading, Summer Reading Loss, was more interesting research:
The reading proficiency levels of students from lower income families declined over the summer months, while the reading proficiency levels of students from middle-income families improved modestly. In a single academic year, this decline resulted in an estimated three-month achievement gap between more advantaged and less advantaged students. Between grades 1 and 6, the potential cumulative impact of this achievement gap could compound to 1.5 years' worth of reading development lost in the summer months alone. (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996).
Now, I had heard about the summer slump but the figures in these reports really blew me away. The importance of keeping our students' reading over the holidays was really driven home to me. At the same time, management were concerned about potential book losses and we agreed to trial summer holiday lending with our two Year 4 classes.
How did it go?
Each student had to return a signed permission slip before they were able to borrow six books from the library (double their usual amount). 28 of the 55 Year 4 students borrowed a total of 158 books. All books have been returned, with only one student requiring a follow up letter.
Even though not all of our Year 4 students borrowed from our school library they did all read at least one book over the summer. I'd like to think that the information about the summer slump sent to parents might have had an impact. We will definitely be doing this again this year.
Summer reading research
I was surprised that almost half of our Year 4 students did not borrow from the school library over the summer holidays. Only five were prevented by the school from borrowing due to outstanding invoices or overdue books. What stopped the remaining students from borrowing? I prepared a short survey and found that while a few simply forgot their permission slips the majority did not borrow books because they were going away for the holidays and their families didn't want to lose them.
When creating my survey I wanted to see whether those students who didn't borrow from our library were simply going to the public library instead. In light of my earlier findings about families not wanting to borrow books when they were going on holiday I was not too surprised to find that less than half of our students visited the public library in the holidays. However, I was astounded to find that only half of our students said that they, or their parents, belonged to the public library.
No way! I realise that I'm a bit biased here but I just can't get my head around that. A large amount of wonderful books are free to take home and our students, or more likely their parents, aren't taking advantage of that. Why??? Please feel free to jump in here with comments because I can't think of any reasons.
