LOL Librarian

" “Mother Tongue language” isn’t about a day in a year, it’s about a lifetime of language.  " - Eowyn Crisfield As a part of our United Nations Week, I began a read-aloud program inviting parents to read aloud in their mother tongue to our student. This is my third year running the program which I do twice a year, once during UN Week and again during our Book Week.  Being an educator and having a love of teaching reading, I know the value of maintaining a students mother tongue. It is the foundation for a child's literacy learning journey. The structure is fairly casual and simple, students are invited to listen to a story read by a parent during their recess. Teachers are sent a schedule of which languages will be featured during morning and afternoon recess, and they share it with their students.  I used a google form to invite parents to read about 2 weeks before the event and then a week before I set up a schedule, send confirmation emails and ensure there's ...

After an action-packed, at least from my perspective, Book Week I began to wonder what is the value added?  My Book Week included daily mother tongue read alouds by parents in two different locations in the school, 5 local author visits so that every grade level saw someone, mystery readers hosted by the facility and the traditional Character Day.  Inside the library, there was a 'Genre Graph' to track students from K-12 favourite fiction genre and a 1 question survey to ask about genrifying them. Also in the K-3 library was a 'Wonder Wall' for questions and students could add a book recommendation to a padlet . The Gr.4-6 students could make recommendations on a padlet and use a variety of QR codes to watch student trailers and publisher created trailers. Our last big event was a competition for our book club groups in a Kahoot team showdown with about 70 kids. However, after all of this by Friday afternoon , I felt like Drew Daywalt's pink crayon, who I happe...

Back to school is a time to change gears and sometimes habits, both for adults and students. At home, I have my own emergent reader to act as a guinea pig for new resources and strategies. In addition to the suggestions on the infographic, there's also the 'device'. With the online literacy being here to stay as educators we have an obligation to support our learners in how to read devices, it is a different skill set. And just like when reading books, it should be done and aloud and together. Modelling is a great piece. Luckily, there's a fun variety of options to guide parents to viewing, like  Tumble books  which has different audio options and also highlights text.  Just books aloud  sorts popular titles into a wide range of categories for easy browsing. Want to support EAL students then  Unite for Literacy  offers different languages. Another avenue are eBooks. Our library has some  interactive eBooks  that are great when viewed on computers ...

Enjoying entertainment is a component of being human. We are born to laugh, cry, learn and connect. Reading is one of form of entertainment that requires some teaching, and not just the mechanics of it but the enjoyment. Even  pediatricians  acknowledge that loving books make for a happier healthier child. Also, it is important that children read in their mother tongue, as well as practice their English. Parents should encourage their children to read and/ or discuss books in their home language. As children learn English, they often still think and comprehend in their mother tongue and then translate to English. Students also benefit from reading in their mother tongue language since they understand how grammar and language structure works, and then they can transfer these skills to understanding English grammar and structure. Here are some tips to help your child become someone who loves literature! Below is a short video about some 'Back to School' books that are available ...

Children love picture books, and this is not surprising but what may be surprising is their fondness for books that are in different languages. We discovered that children were interested in checking out books that weren't in English or their mother tongue. They happily sat and made up stories of their own and pointed out other features of text like sentence length, word endings or how the words looked.  Dual language books are a wonderful thing, and in an international school it helps children to learn about another language and their culture, thereby creating tolerance. There are some really interesting blogs and articles about the power of dual language books. I wish there were more available, somebody should be making a fortune of translating favourites into dual language tales.