“Reading transcends class, race, age, and gender. It’s a free magic carpet ride to anywhere on Earth (or beyond), at any point in time. Every child, regardless of age or ability, deserves to be able to access the written word.” (Hawthorne, 2021.)
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Reading has always had a very special place in my heart. Not only because it brings back beautiful childhood memories, but also because it was my escape during what I consider the darkest moments of my childhood. It was my place of comfort while I grieved the loss of my mother, and my happy place where I could be anyone, do anything, and live many lives through the pages of a book. Now that I am a grown up, I continue to love reading and have made it my mission to help create a reading culture within our school.
But what does it really mean to have a strong reading culture in our schools? And more importantly, how do we know we are on the right track to achieving this?
In her article “How to promote a Reading Culture in School,” Hannah Hawthorne defines a reading culture as “the environment where reading is championed, valued, respected, and encouraged.” She goes on to add that “reading lies at the heart of the curriculum and it’s of the upmost importance to a child’s personal, social, and academic success, as well as their general wellbeing… building a strong reading culture puts reading at the forefront of school improvement. A creative and exciting reading culture not only breeds capable and committed readers, (but it also) boosts wellbeing, community connectedness, and student outcomes.” (Hawthorne, 2021)
We have a very important job as educators and teacher-librarians and that is to provide as many opportunities as possible for our students to access the “written word,” of course by written word I don’t mean only books, but also a vast number of multimodal resources. The more exposure our students get to the written word, the easier it will be for them to see themselves as belonging in a community where reading is a significant and enjoyable activity. On the other hand, we must also keep in mind that “being surrounded by cultural forces that fail to support reading or diminish reading outright erodes students’ interest in reading and prevents them from sustaining any reading motivation.” (Kelly & Miller, 2013). As TLs, our job is to ensure this does not happen and that by helping build a strong reading culture within our school community, we will “put literacy at the forefront of school improvement.” (Hawthorne, 2021)
Having taken a few courses already for my Teacher-Librarianship Diploma, I have come to understand the many benefits of having a strong reading culture in schools. Many questions keep popping in my head as I read more and more about literacy and the learning commons. Some of those questions are: Why are literacy rates dropping in this day and age? How can we help the 21st century learner be successful? What can the learning commons do to help our school community create a reading culture everyone is proud of?
Before I lay out my 2-year literacy plan for our learning commons, I must first discuss the importance of literacy for our students today, how our Library commons can become a centre for literacy, some things to consider when planning my goals, and possible setbacks I may encounter along the way.
What is Literacy and why is it important?
According to the Thesaurus, literacy is “the quality or state of being literate, especially the ability to read and write.” (Thesaurus, 2022). However, upon closer examination, you will see that the word literacy is more complex than that. Literacy is the ability to communicate and interact with those around us. Amber Peterson from the National Council of Teachers of English adds that literacy is the “way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, “We Are Here!” (NCTE, 2020). John Trischitti takes it a step further in his TED talk called “Literacy is the answer”, he says that “If literacy were a disease, we would be going through the worst pandemic in recorded history…but unlike a disease like diabetes or cancer, this one does have a cure…literacy is a necessary tool to stop social cycles like poverty, crime, hunger…illiteracy is the one factor that can potentially influence your entire life.” (Trischitti, 2020). He goes on to add that “traditional education is important, but reading is the foundation upon which all other essential skills are built.”
If you would like to listen to his TED talk click on the picture below.
Literacy is vital if we want to provide our 21st century learners with the necessary skills if we want them to be successful in the future. Nowadays, our students are being bombarded with multimodal contexts left, right, and center; this can be very intimidating and potentially catastrophic if they do not know what to do with all this new information.
Studies have shown that children will need higher “levels of literacy in so many aspects of their lives. Everywhere (they) look, there’s a sea of information for them to digest – in school, at home, on public transport, on the roads, and on digital technology interfaces. Not only is reading required for success in future employment, but an ability to read will help children in future relationships, when running a household, and when navigating all aspects of their personal lives.” (Hawthorne, 2021)
Our job as educators and teacher librarians is to provide these students with the necessary skills to be able to digest, dissect, and access various modes of communication, from books, videos, news, to the latest technology out there. But how can we do that? As Teacher librarians, we are in a unique position to become the vessels of information our students need. By creating vibrant literacy programs within our school community, promoting our school learning commons, enlisting the help of our community, and by engaging our students and allowing to have access to deeper learning skills; we will help them build a thriving community where we all celebrate learning and successes as they learn to question, make connections, create, think critically, collaborate, construct new meaning and most importantly, make mistakes and learn from them.
So how can the School Library Learning Commons become a Centre for literacy our students will thrive on? How can both TLs at our school help our community reach our literacy goal in the next two years?
Let’s back track a little before I answer these questions…
Background
Our school is a dual track school built on the Ancestral, Traditional and Unceded share territories of the Katzie First Nation and Kwantlen First Nation. We are currently sitting at 99.4% capacity, with a student body of 624 plus approximately 75 staff members, including educators, educations assistants, admin, receptionists, non-enrolling teachers, CSW, counsellors, custodians. Many cultures are represented within our walls, from First Nations to up to 35 different countries. Our ELL population has steadily increase in the past two years with more than doubling in the past year. Socio-economic status varies from one end of the spectrum to the other. We offer breakfast clubs, lunches and the “star backpack” program, where we give backpacks with food on Fridays to families in need.
Last year, our student learning survey indicated that about 47% of our student population reads for fun regularly. Our main literacy goal is to increase that to 60% by the end of this year and 70% by the end of the 2223/24 school year.
Our Library Learning Commons
What is a Library commons?
According to the Canadian Library Association, it is “a whole school approach to building a participatory learning community…(it) is the physical and virtual collaborative learning hub of the school. (A place where) reading thrives, learning literacies and technology competencies evolve, and critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and playing to learn are nourished.” (CLA, 2014). It is the heart of the school, the place to be, a hub of learning. And just like the SLLC is the heart, literacy is the blood that makes the heart beat and bring life to the community as a whole.
Furthermore, Leading Learning tells us that Learning Commons are not only the hub of the community but also that “our school libraries should reflect our common values of equity, diversity, and cultural identity as well as best approaches in the educational and library professions. They should be contextually relevant to student needs and success, and built, cared for, measured, renewed, and sustained on an ongoing basis by their learning communities. We should position libraries to lead learning for the future.” (CSL, 2014)
Prior to my job share partner and I taking over, our library was mostly used for book exchanges. Sadly, I can count with one hand the number of times I walked through those doors by myself or even with my class for other things besides a book exchange. To be honest, I was a little afraid of approaching our TL. Don’t get me wrong, she was a lovely lady, and we would talk often in the staff room, but I would never go inside the library to talk and if I needed resources I would send an email. It was like there was a wall surrounding the room and no one could enter. I now realize with regret all the untap potential I missed out because I did not take the extra step and approached her. Fast forward to when my job share partner and I took over, I was surprised to find out that I was not the only one who felt that way! So, we set out to change that. As we know, the learning commons is the hub of the school, the heart, the place to be…” a common or shared space that is both physical and virtual…it allows users to create their own environments to improve learning…it’s about changing school culture and transforming the way teaching and learning occur.” (Loertscher, Koechlin & Rosenfeld, 2012, 1)
With all this in mind, we created a plan to turn our learning commons into the hub of the school, a welcoming place where the doors are always open, where no class will be turned away and if needed, we can accommodate up to 3 classes while doing book exchange at the same time. We are very lucky that our library is one of the biggest in the district.
Our school library began its transformation into a learning commons and underwent through significant changes in terms of layout and book collection. To this day, we are still investing in some physical changes and furniture, but sadly as we all know, money does not grow on trees, so we have had to get creative in how we tackle certain things. We have added comfy seating, lamps, plants, a campfire corner where we sit for story time, soft music playing in the background, etc. We want our students and staff to feel relaxed, welcomed, happy, safe, and most importantly, a sense of belonging.
Our library collection has also started to change and grow in the past year as well…one of our main goals as a school is to make sure everyone in our community is represented equally. We have acquired many First Nations books, and other culturally diverse stories as well as more multimodal resources such as games, graphic novels, apps, etc.
Atrium
Genrefied Easy Chapter Books section
Reading nook
Bean Bag Corner 
Easy Picture book section
Our Fireplace Reading Corner
Literacy Plan
The Canadian Library Association notes that the themes of “Literacy Leadership, Engaging Readers, Information Literacy, Critical Literacy, Digital Literacy and Citizenship, Cultural Literacy, and Literacy partners” are key elements when creating a well-balanced literacy program within our schools that will aid us in creating an environment that will “empower life-long learners.” (CLA, 2014)
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Currently our LLC schedule consists of 20-minute blocks for book exchanges, a 40-minute co-teaching block available on Friday afternoons, 2 40-minute library prep blocks, 2 60-minute remedial reading blocks (outside the library) and 2 40-minute PE prep blocks. The remedial reading blocks and PE blocks are new this year and have decrease our library time by 4 hours weekly. This means we (my job-share partner and I) have had to get creative and juggle around to continue to provide a somewhat flexible schedule for our community. Our theme this year is tied to our school theme of “The Stories that bring us together.” The main goal is to continue to engage readers, create a life-long love of reading, reinforce our students’ reading identity, and create a culture where reading is not only encouraged by held to a high standard. Therefore, I will be concentrating mostly on the CLA standard of “fostering literacies to empower life-long learners” when setting our SLLC literacy goals for the next 2 years.
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Kelley and Miller make a great point when they say that “if we want children to read more, we must provide them with classrooms, libraries, and homes where reading is the norm. If cultural acceptance includes wild reading, then children will read.” (Kelley &M Miller, 2013). Furthermore, we know that society benefits when more people read… “people cannot be active or informed citizens unless they can read…reading is a prerequisite for almost all cultural and social activities.” As TLs, our main job will be to help build a strong reading culture within our school community; doing this will put literacy “at the forefront of school improvement.” (Hawthorne, 2021). However, it is important to mention that this job does not solely fall on the two of us. Hawthorne reminds us that “creating a reading culture should not be the responsibility of an individual. It takes dedication, perseverance, and effort. It’s lead by an enthusiastic and dedicated senior leadership team, and advocated by every pupil, parent, care provider, and staff member in (our) school community.” (2021) We are very lucky that our admin team is very supportive and have jumped in with both feet to a lot of our suggestions. This in turn has made it easier to enlist the help of more staff and the PAC.
According to the CLA standards, our Learning commons is currently sitting between the emerging and evolving category since approximately 47% of our students are mostly able to “self-select reading texts from the collection and report that they enjoy reading for pleasure.” (CLA, 2014 p17). Furthermore, our students also participate in virtual and face-to-face reading programs.
Knowing where we are at and where we would like to go, I have come up with three literacy goals which I know will help our school-wide literacy goal of “increasing the percentage of student population who love reading for fun by 20% by the end of the 2223/2224 school year.”
The goals are:
1) Continue to foster a school-wide reading culture by making reading opportunities more accessible to all.
2) Improve digital literacy for staff and students
3) Increase school community involvement in various literacy programs
So, what are we currently doing to not only achieve our goals but to also continue to foster a reading culture within our school?
Like I have already discussed, this is not a one-person job, we have slowly enlisted the help of our staff…it has taken time but like I already mentioned, we were on a mission to change the image of our SLLC. I’m happy to report that our “sneak attacks” have worked so far.
Some of the approaches we have taken and continue to take this year are:
• Community Storytime: Every Sunday evening, our school parent Facebook page goes live and one of our staff members reads a story online. We started doing this during the pandemic and received such great feedback that we have continued to do it. We usually ask for volunteers during our staff meetings for the upcoming month (I must add that this took a few months as teachers were very hesitant, we even suggested drawing names, and this really got them going…that was one of our sneak attacks! We also offered to pre-record the video and post it online on Sundays, this made some of our teachers feel more comfortable as they would not be live. We have had from our admin to our favourite custodians join in the fun! We announce every Friday over the PA who will be our guest reader that weekend and invite the community to join us. One thing to note is how great it is for the children to connect with staff they do not usually see in the building during school. This to us is important when creating a love for reading as they see every adult in the school indulging in some reading fun.
• Principal/ vice-principal Read alouds: we have created a sign-up sheet and placed it in the staff room where we “rent” our principal and vice-principal to a classroom to read a story. We have created a very flexible schedule for them where there is a chance once every couple days for one of them to go for 15 minutes to a classroom. This has taken a bit more work as our admins are always busy; however, we are happy they both jumped in at the opportunity to continue to foster a love of reading in the school and make every effort to make it to the classrooms at one point during the day.
• DEAR: as a school community, we have allocated 15-20 minutes after lunch for silent reading. How it plays out, is at the teacher’s discretion. During this time, we open the library for any classes who would like to do their DEAR there. We are very lucky to have a big space and can accommodate up to 3 classes at a time.
• Stop, Drop, and Read: we started this campaign a year and a half ago. How it works is we play a song in the PA, and everyone stops what they are doing and picks up a book. We then read as a whole school for about 15 minutes until Admin announces the end over the PA system. We had a few setbacks at the beginning as sometimes teachers were outside and had to go get books, or were at the gym, etc. We solved this problem by creating book bins and book bags and placed them in the gym, music room, support rooms, the office, and by the outside doors so teachers would always have access to books. I just love how for that time; the school is so quiet you can hear a pin drop…and knowing that this is because everyone is reading makes your heart warm for sure! Due to time constraints, we have decided to do this 3 times a year for a week. Students, staff, and families have responded positively to this reading campaign that we continue to do it.
• Remedial reading groups: the learning commons continues to work with our support teachers to create reading groups where the TL, support teacher or EAs work with students on reading strategy and phonemic awareness. This year, our admin has also allocated 2 hours per week of library time where we can work with these groups uninterrupted.
• Book displays: Children are curious by nature, so we like to exploit that by creating colorful displays of some of the books in our collection. Our SLLC is surrounded by windows, so we like to display a variety of books for children to see as they walk in the hallways. Our idea came from “window shopping.” We know that people are drawn in by what they see on shop windows, so we wanted to do the same at our school. Our newer books are never able to stay in the library for long as children see them on the display and come in to sign them out. We also have books on top of our shelves and have genrefied our Easy Readers section so our youngest readers can find the series or genre they are looking for by themselves. We want our readers to gain independence and take ownership of their reading identity. According to Kelley and Miller, if we want our readers to be more independent “sometimes the best thing to do is get out of their way…if students depend on our validation for every book they read, they aren’t reading for their own purposes and needs.” (Kelley & Miller, 2013).
• Culturally diverse books: This is an ongoing project as we strive to find resources that are inclusive of the diversity represented at our school. Last year, my job-share partner and I watched a Ted talk for one of our courses, where author Chimamanda Ngozi shared the dangers of “a single story.” She notes that “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” (Adichie, 2009) This really struck home for us as we realized that our collection was not as diverse as we once thought. We have slowly started to add more culturally diverse resources to our collection. We now understand the importance of helping our students see themselves in stories. The more they connect with the characters, the more they enjoy reading. And the more they enjoy reading, the more they will be able to improve their academic success and their life.
• LVE’s Monthly pick: This program works like “Heather’s Pick” at Chapters. We give a card to each staff member at the school, and once a month (Usually during Pro-D days) they get to come down to the learning commons to look for one of their favourite stories. We then display their picks around the library and by the windows so students can see what their teachers like and can sign the books out. This also helps us make connections with our students as they learn that some of their favourite stories might be a teacher’s favourite too. A setback is that teachers have no time sometimes to come in and pick a book, or they feel obligated or overwhelmed by adding more to their plate. What we do is ask them to think of a list of 5 books or authors and we look for them in our LLC, we then earmark them and can change the books for them so they do not have to come down if they are too busy.
• Bookstagram: This is a bulletin board we change every couple weeks. We ask staff and students to tell us what they think about books they’re reading and if they recommend them. Kelley and Miller point out that “the number one way children find out about books they would like to read is through recommendations from other readers.” On the other hand, sharing recommendations also benefits the reader as they reflect about the reasons why they liked those books. Keep in mind that by “reflecting on our book recommendations, we can discover a lot about ourselves and what we value about books.” (Kelley & Miller, 2013)
• Bookfest/Reading link challenge: Two of our major events at the Learning commons are our annual Bookfest for grade 6/7 students and our Reading Link Challenge for grades 4/5. Bookfest is District wide, so all elementary schools participate. For Bookfest, participants are asked to read 6 books in total, we meet once a week and create Ka hoot quizzes to check for understanding and prepare for our final “showdown,” an event like “Jeopardy,” where schools go head to head competing for the grand prize: funds for books for our learning commons, a pizza party, a nice trophy which can be displayed at the winning school for a year, and an author visit from one of the books. Last year, due to the pandemic, we have had to hold our event online and even had to deliver Ipads to the classrooms for small groups to participate as we were not allowed to combine classes. We are so happy that this year, fingers crossed, we will be able to be together once again in person.
Reading link is a community-based effort to promote reading. It is hosted by our Local Library and schools can sign up to participate. Students are required to read 4/6 books and just like Bookfest, we get together once a week and practice for our final competition. Prizes include new resources for our learning commons as well as the title of Reading Challenge Champions for the region. To learn more about it click here. Last year, as my final project for one of my courses, I created an online book for our school to use to prepare for the challenge. I used the program called Book Creator to create online quizzes, created book trailers for all participating books, and an introductory video. I used it with our learning commons, and I am so pleased with the results that I am already starting to think about creating a new book for this year’s challenge. You can check out the online book by clicking on the picture below.
In the next two years, we are hoping to implement even more events to achieve our literacy goals. One of our main objectives is to start involving our school families and surrounding community to reach not only our students, but the people they encounter outside our school walls. We need to keep in mind “how cultural factors affect students’ views towards reading and evaluate how implicit and explicit messages from adults influence students’ reading lives…how do parents view reading? What role does reading play in our school culture? How do we make reading ordinary and expected in children’s lives?” (Kelley & Miller, 2013) By making this a “community effort” we are not only showing children how important reading is, but the community as well. But how can we achieve this? Below is a list of some of the things we are planning on doing.
• Add reading nooks around the school: we would like to create visuals around the school to spark curiosity within the school community. One of our ideas is to create reading nooks throughout the school where we invite children and staff to take a break if needed and read a story. These do not have to be elaborate: a beanbag, small comfy chair, or a cushion with a basket of books or a small bookcase. We have many little corners that could work. One of the setbacks we see is that some of the children might use these as toys or they could pose a safety issue if the chairs are used to hit others. We are currently discussing as staff how we can go around these issues. Some solutions are to use only cushions to start and baskets, ask teachers to show their class how to use the reading nooks or my job-share partner and I can go to every classroom to show them, inviting students to use them during our announcements and reminding them about the expectations, creating visuals around the nook showing them what to do.
• Human libraries: Christine Watkins notes that “Human libraries provide the opportunity for the community to share and understand the experiences of others in their community” (Watkins, 2014). The “human books” come from all walks of life and bring many experiences and expertise. These types of libraries will bring oral history, another way of learning, into our learning commons. It’s important to note that “by providing access to otherwise difficult to obtain knowledge embedded in community members, human libraires have the potential to generate new kinds of knowledge and experience sharing while providing new access into local history and cultural heritage.” (Dobreski & Huang, 2016) I am really excited to start organizing these events. We have already discussed it with PAC, and they have offered to provide refreshments for our guests, and many have offered to volunteer to be part of the event. We are hoping to bring in guests from our local First Nations communities, community workers, veterans, local government figures, etc. One of our major setbacks will be availability of participants. We are planning to start small by inviting one guest and expand from there. We will also be posting in our social media accounts calling for volunteers to take part in our project. We might even call our local newspaper to write a column about our project and ask for volunteers. With patience and a lot of effort, we will be able to slowly create a unique “collection” for our students to experience.
• Book fairs: Due to the pandemic, we had not been able to organize a scholastic book fair for our school. This year we are planning to organize one and by next year, host two fairs. We know that not everyone will be able to participate due to financial constraints, but we are hoping that some of the money raise can go to us creating small book bags to send home to our school members who need it most.
• Community book swaps: “when schools close down for the summer, many children, particularly children of low-income homes, do not have access to books.” (Kelly &Miller, 2013). We would like to change that by hosting an annual book swap. We will start sending out information to all our school families and even local businesses to donate gently used books to our school. We will also use some of our school funds and possibly have school fundraisers to purchase more books to add. In June, we are planning to invite students and families to come browse our book tables and take home what they would like. We will set a maximum number of books to take as we want to give all our school families equal opportunity to access books! We will also encourage them to swap books with school families once they read them.
• “Rent-a-grown-up” program: Prior to the pandemic, our school had hosted monthly days where we would have grandparents come a read with children around the school. We would like to start this program again but also add other family members. It’s important to note that “when (adults) read books with children, rather than to children, children listen more carefully, think more deeply, and engage more creatively with stories.” (Bright Horizons, 2021) Our objective is to reach out to our families and see if we have some volunteers to come in. Security and safety of our students is very important so we are in the process of talking with our admin about ways we can ensure this.
• Big buddy reading program: We have already started talking with support teachers and staff about organizing a weekly “school stop, drop, and read” program where our intermediate students will come to our primary classes and read with our younger kids for 15 minutes one morning during the week. We would pair up buddy classes to make it easier for teachers. Some of our setbacks might be “attendance and tardiness.” We will address these by having teachers assign children without a big buddy or little buddy to other groups.
• First chapter Fridays: We would like to spark curiosity in our readers by sharing the first chapter of a book on the PA system every couple weeks. Gaiman tells us that “the simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.” (Gaiman, 2013). The simplest way to do this is by sparking their curiosity in new genres by reading a few pages from books once a week.
• Digital literacy pro-D workshops and units for staff and students: the 21st century learner is now surrounded by digital outlets that are constantly changing. Many Canadian school boards are focusing on training students to use technology instead of providing them with opportunities that will not only teach them how to use the tools but will enhance their learning experience (Loertscher & Koechlin, 2012). Furthermore, some staff are still very hesitant about using technology in the classroom. We would like to change that by organizing workshops where we could teach them how to use some of the tools available to us. We can start by creating “kits” for teachers using Web 2.0 apps that could be used in their classrooms. When teachers learn how to use them and see how they can be used to maximize learning, they will be more willing to use them. We will also offer to come to their classes to teach students how to use them and will open “shop” a couple times a week to provide tech assistance. We are also hoping to create our own “Tech Squad” by the end of the second year. This squad will be led by the LLC and will have students from grade 6/7. Our job will be to provide simple tech assistance to staff around the school. Our IT department will continue to take care of our bigger tech issues but things like, how to use book creator or tools from Web 2.0, can be taken care of by our squad. This will also give students ownership of their learning as they assist others and will help them develop social skills.
• Literacy seminars for parents: According to Kelley & Miller, “educating parents about the importance of daily reading, increasing book access through libraries and book ownership, and promoting the value of reading aloud must take prominence in parent outreach programs.” (Kelly & Miller, 2013) We need to teach parents simple ways to incorporate more reading into family routines. We need to find ways to discuss with parents the benefits of daily reading time at home and to show them how to squeeze more reading into daily activities. Some ways we are planning to do this is by organizing family info nights from time to time, including reading tips in our weekly school newsletter, asking teachers to share book recommendations as part of their signatures in their emails, create top 10 booklists every month to share with families, support families who don’t have access to books by allowing them to take extra books home or opening up the library for an hour after school so they can come in and read with their children. For parents who cannot make these times, we can offer monthly evening library time (one hour) to give them an opportunity to come in, we are planning to do this as a trial period to see if having a later time will increase parental involvement. If it proves to be successful, we will make sure to do it maybe twice a month or even three times; if not, we will probably do it on a sign-up basis.
• Continue to expand our collection: we know how important it is to be able to give our students opportunities to connect to their backgrounds and history. We will continue to expand our collection to help our students further develop their reading identity. Weeding is still an ongoing process in our SLCC, we project this will take us until the end of next school year as our collection had not been weeded for 10 years and we have quite a few outdated books still on our shelves. We have currently finished the first “sweep” in our fiction section” and are starting to slowly weed our non-fiction section.
In conclusion, while many of the goals will certainly take up to 2 years to achieve, I believe that this plan is reasonable for both my job-share partner and I to see through. We will continue to enlist the help of our school community as we know that “a learning commons is a whole school approach to building a participatory learning community.” (CLA, 2014) We are both still pretty new at our position so it’s important that we don’t “bite more than we can chew.” We do not want to overextend ourselves and end up not being helpful to our students and colleagues. We are hoping to revise our goals on a quarterly basis (if time allows it) to see if we are heading on the right track and to see what we can change, omit, or add to continue to head in the right path. Our main goal will always be to have our learning commons “reflect our common values of equity, diversity, and cultural identity” (CLA, 2014) I am really excited to continue to work towards our main objective of “continuing to foster a reading culture in our school and to increase the percentage of students who love to read for pleasure on a regular basis.” I know that together we can achieve this…after all, our students and their families deserve it!
The Duchess of Bookington
References:
Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story [Youtube video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
Archivist. (n.d.). Dear Teachers: The Learning Commons and the Future of Learning: Response to a Canadian Study – Canadian School Libraries Research Archive. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://researcharchive.canadianschoollibraries.ca/2017/10/15/dear-teachers-the-learning-commons-and-the-future-of-learning-response-to-a-canadian-study/
Association, I. L. (n.d.). ILA Reporter. Www.ila.org. Volume 32, Issue 4: p8. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://www.ila.org/publications/ila-reporter/issue/6/volume-xxxii-issue-4
Barrett, Lindsay. “25 Ways to Build Your School's Reading Culture.” We Are Teachers, 11 May 2021, https://www.weareteachers.com/build-reading-culture/
Bright Horizons. “Reading with Children at Home & in the Classroom.” www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/Articles/E-News/reading-with-kids#podcast. Accessed 10 Feb. 2022.
Canadian Library Association. (2014). Leading learning: Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada. Links to an external site. Ottawa: ON (p.17) see Fostering Literacies to Empower Life-Long Learners
Dobreski, B., & Huang, Y. (2016). The joy of being a book: Benefits of participation in the human library. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 53(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2016.14505301139
Gaiman, N. and Riddell, C. (September 6, 2018). Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell on why we need libraries - an essay in pictures. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2018/sep/06/neil-gaiman-and-chris-riddell-on-why-we-need-libraries-an-essay-in-pictures
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