Research skills + geography + programming = lots of library fun!

Learning research skills is critical to success in middle school - and life in general! We have no shortage of easy access to information, but being able to evaluate and critically select the information that is most relevant and appropriate for your purpose takes practice.

In library classes, 4th graders created Scratch games after using the CultureGrams database and Capstone's One Nation book series to locate information about a US state. They selected 12 "just right" (not too obvious, not too obscure) facts about their state, wrote them down in their own words, selected their best clues, and put them into Scratch games they programmed themselves. 

This project honed many important skills: research, critical thinking, nonfiction comprehension, and paraphrasing! Our culminating activity was playing one another's games (and leaving complimentary feedback). It was great to have our Head of School and other staff members show up to join in the fun! Follow the link above to try them out yourself!

The power of storytelling: our visit from Donald Davis

Storytelling is an ancient and powerful art, one that long predates our relatively recent experimentation with the written word. Satisfying the universal human need for connection with others, it continues to flourish today. Storytelling is not an exact recitation of memorized lines; the storyteller observes and responds to each audience. No two tellings of the same story are exactly alike.

Donald Davis is legendary in the international storytelling circuit as a master of the craft; someone who vividly shares the particulars of his upbringing in rural North Carolina in a way that has his listeners laughing, crying, and nodding along in recognition, recalling their own family stories. In addition to his many recordings and books, he also runs workshops at many of the festivals where he performs. If you missed him at Open Window this week, or if you'd like to see him again, mark July 22-23 on your calendar for the PowellsWood Storytelling Festival in Federal Way, WA where there will be a great line-up of tellers!

Watching gifted tellers at work (our school has hosted Carmen Agra Deedy, Alton Chung, John McCutcheon and Antonio Sacre) and engaging in storytelling games is joyful and educational. I've heard professionals - people working in law and business - say that what matters is being able to tell the most persuasive and memorable story. Teachers, politicians, and historians know this to be true as well.

We were incredibly fortunate to be able to host Donald Davis at our school this year. Check out the photos below: the students' faces really say it all!

The Garden of My Imaan: a universal story with contemporary relevance

For our most recent 3rd/4th grade book club we read Farhana Zia's The Garden of My Imaan, a charming work of realistic fiction that covers topics many kids will connect with: dealing with the popular crowd and the mean kid at school, figuring out what religious faith means to you, what to do when some of your friends are growing up a bit more quickly than you are, making a rash decision you later regret...

At the same time, it covers very specific experiences that other readers will be overjoyed to encounter as mirrors to their lives, such as what it feels like to internalize negative messages about a group you belong to and how these feelings, when unexamined, can drive a wedge between you and members of your community; and what it's like to be lumped together with people you actually are quite different from in important ways.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang handles these complexities very well for older readers, but a book like Garden, which makes them accessible to younger students, is a treasure indeed!

One student launched our conversation by asking, "Why are some people mean to Muslims?" Some of the answers these 8-10 year olds generated: "People don't ask questions so they feel uncomfortable and scared," "They think that 'different' means 'wrong'," and "They are insecure about their own lives, so they take it out on other people."

One of our activities was acting out scenes from the book:

Inspired by Aliya's "Dear Allah" letters, they wrote to someone of their choice. One student chose Fumiko Ishioka, director of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center, a person she admires from having read Hana's Suitcase. 

For our last meeting, we celebrated with Indian food! The mouth-watering descriptions in the book made this the perfect ending to a great book club! 

Visual literacy in 5th grade

Visual literacy is a critical skill in the 21st century, defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries as follows:

"Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture."

Visual literacy played a major part in helping historian Scott Reynolds Nelson crack the mystery of the historical figure behind the tall tale as revealed in Ain't Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry, the young readers' version of his fantastic work of historical detection, Steel Drivin' Man.

The New York Times' Learning Blog runs a feature called What's Going on in this Picture? to help educators cultivate this skill. During our 5th grade Information Literacy classes we've been using their images to engage in online discussions that not only develop visual literacy, but also help students learn and practice appropriate digital citizenship skills.

Below are a few excerpts from our discussion of the photo above. The online format highlights a strength of technology: it allows all students to have a voice, including those who might be reluctant to speak up in a face-to-face discussion, and those who prefer more time to think before making a contribution. Students can build on one another's responses even after some have moved on to other thoughts. They also see that asking thoughtful questions is in itself a valuable contribution - it's not just about having answers!

"The two people are kind of on a Segway, why?"

"I wonder why one of the guys is barefoot. It looks like that he's either getting ready for a track meet or he's done with the track meet."

"I think that Usain Bolt accidentally tripped on the camera man and when this photo was taken it was probably in London in 2012 because his claim to fame is from the Olympics and the most recent one was in London. and by the clarity of the photo I can tell it was recent."

"Why are his cleats in his hands? Ideas?"

"I think that the camera man had the wheelie thing and was using it to video the athletic guy that was playing the sport. I think this happened after the race/competition/sport, because the athletic-looking person is holding his shoes, meaning he is either about to or just finished a race. He may have been playing on grass, because it looks like he has cleats. I think the man riding was riding because of his legs' positions."

"I think there's some kind of race going on, because the people are really sweaty, and they seem to be putting a lot of effort in. Also, I'm wondering what the big thing attached to the eyes of the guy who seems to be falling. Anyone have an idea?"

"I think the guy that has athletic wear is playing some Olympic sport. I think this because he is wearing Jamaican colors and has Jamaica written on his shirt. I think the other guy is a camera man who is filming the sport, because he has a big camera."

4th graders rescue books!

Two conference sessions - one by school librarian April Bunn at AASL and one by Yong Zhao at NWAIS - inspired our 4th grade Lonely Book project. As Zhao said in another keynote,

“First, a good project has to have an authentic audience, an authentic purpose. When students create anything, it has to matter to someone. It has to touch emotions.” Through project experiences... “students have to learn to understand their own strengths and weaknesses so they can seek partnership with someone else.” Finally... “a project has to help a student understand someone else’s needs.”

First, students talked about how they choose books to read - what makes a book appealing and why? Next, they read sample professional reviews and learned about the typical structure of a book review (a brief plot summary followed by evaluative comments that include a recommended audience). This was new to most of them - and they now have a new way of deciding which books they might want to read as they browse library catalogs or online bookstores.

Second, they selected "lonely books," ones that have not been checked out as much as they deserve, wrote and peer-edited reviews, and designed new covers they thought would be appealing to other students. They then hid the original covers under wrapping paper to make them more tantalizing.


For the final stage of the project, we will read the books and reviews to younger students and ask them to vote on their fate. If a book gets more "no" than "yes" votes, it will be discarded from our collection. Students became very attached to their books - and that fueled their motivation to write engaging reviews and design appealing covers that will encourage their audiences to give them a try.

This project included an authentic audience and purpose, and it required 4th graders to think about the needs and interests of Kindergarten through 3rd graders. The Library Learning Commons was a happy buzz of activity throughout, and emotion has also played a role, as they wait in anticipation to hear the final verdict on the books they chose to promote!

Book reviews: whose opinions count?

It’s often said that books are critical as windows and mirrors – opening up new worlds and reflecting back your own reality – and also as maps that show you possibilities for the future. This realization inspired We Need Diverse Books, an organization whose mission it is to increase the diversity of characters in books for young people.

Often the conversations focus on supporting more authors and illustrators from diverse backgrounds, but another area now coming to the forefront is the diversity of the book reviewers themselves. A recent survey by School Library Journal, one of the largest sources of reviews of material for youth, found that 88.8% of their reviewers are white. 

Why does this matter? As Megan Schliesman writes in "Are We Privileging White Voices in Criticism?"

"...it’s more than a matter of taste. It’s a matter of knowledge and experience, and we need to be willing to listen to one another, and especially to the voices of those who are speaking from positions of knowledge and experience..."

YA author Malinda Lo's article "Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews," points out a number of problems she's observed when reading reviews of diverse literature (do read her eloquent and passionate post in full, as it is well worth your time):

"These reviews reveal a few specific issues or perceptions about diversity: the idea that diversity in a book is contrived; the critique that a book contains too many issues; the question of believability; the demand for glossaries; and finally, unsupported assumptions relating to race. ...All of these microaggressions add up to support an environment in which particular beliefs are held as given: that readers are predominantly white; that books should explain their diverse content to those white readers; that too much diversity is unbelievable. ...Book reviews are one visible place where it’s possible to see these beliefs written in plain English."

Book reviews matter because they form the basis of reading and purchasing decisions by parents, teachers, and librarians. A book review has significant power to shape perceptions of a book. It can open a reader's eyes to nuances they might otherwise have missed, offering much-needed context and awareness. Critical evaluation is also part of every award selection process. 

I was thrilled to be granted a spot in this year's Bill Morris Seminar: Book Evaluation Training, intended to "result in new and emerging leaders for future Association for Library Service to Children evaluation committees," which include the Newbery, Caldecott, Sibert, Wilder, Carnegie, Batchelder, Belpré, Geisel, and Odyssey awards. While my personal background and experiences include a fairly broad range of types of diversity, we all have room to learn and grow in this area. 

As a reviewer for School Library Journal, I am often sent books that have themes relating to diversity or that were originally published in another country. Conversations such as the ones inspired by the articles above have helped me to be more aware of my own blind spots, as well as the responsibility I bear to the creators of these works, and their potential readers. Whether the Bill Morris Seminar eventually leads me to the great honor of serving on an ALSC award committee or not, I know that I will learn much of value that I can then offer to those I serve as I choose books for our collection, advise teachers on materials for lessons, design my own curriculum, and recommend titles to students.

As you read book reviews and consider the assessments they put forth, I encourage you to bear in mind the fact that they were filtered through someone else's perspective and experiences which may or may not fit with your own. Well-intentioned though reviewers overwhelmingly may be, this is ultimately a very human process and we can only benefit from bringing more voices to the table.

Random thoughts on balancing choice and challenge

As is obvious from a few of my previous posts, I am a huge advocate of allowing children to make free reading choices:

• The importance of independent reading choices
• What makes a book "challenging enough"?
• Matt Haig's 30 Things to Tell a Book Snob
• Neil Gaiman speaks his mind: Let children read the books they love
• Comfort books

Not only is this a proven strategy for improving reading ability, it also develops a positive association with reading, which is more likely to lead someone to identify as a reader than if it becomes a source of anxiety because adults decide that the books you like are not "the right ones."

These lines from Jacqueline Woodson's gorgeous memoir, the National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming, poignantly speak to this:

"Every Monday, my mother takes us
to the library around the corner. We are allowed
to take out seven books each. On those days,
no one complains
that all I want are picture books.

Those days, no one tells me to read faster
to read harder books
to read like Dell.

No one is there to say, Not that book,
when I stop in front of the small paperback
with a brown boy on the cover.
Stevie."

Challenge is a great thing, but it's different when you choose a challenging book because it excites you. And of course "challenge" can mean many different things. We all pick up books for many reasons - relaxation, escape, nostalgia, to learn about a subject that excites us, to be able to talk with peers, to appreciate beautiful art, to laugh, to cry - and it's crucial that we let children explore all these types of reading.

Still, there are times when readers of all ages can get stuck in a rut - and there are ways to make stepping outside your usual comfort zone fun and engaging. Lately much of my kid and teen reading list has come from two sources:

• homework for the Bill Morris Seminar: Book Evaluation Training 
• the Middle Grade book club I joined this fall

I was thrilled to be given a spot in the Bill Morris Seminar, and my desire to participate is motivation enough for me to engage even with the titles I might not have picked up on my own, some of which are turning out to be new favorites!

The same goes for the book club, whose members include authors, school librarians and children's booksellers. Each month's host chooses the book we'll read, so I'm discovering new books there as well.

I have a few ways of offering kids choices and nudging them to challenge themselves with something different. One is the Battle of the Books, which our Middle School is trying for the first time this year in a competition against Overlake School in February. Students select most of the titles on the list, and must read at least 4 of the 12 to participate.

Book clubs, which I run during lunch and recess or breaks for grades 3 and up, also expose students to a variety of books and genres they might not otherwise try - but the fun of sharing with peers is encouragement enough.

If you're concerned about your child's limited reading choices, instead of saying "no" to the ones they're choosing, try to find fun ways to help them say "yes" to other books too:

• play audiobooks in the car or at home
• read together (you don't stop eating together when your child can feed herself, so don't stop reading aloud once they can read independently!)
• spend more leisurely time browsing in a library or bookstore
• join or start a parent-child book club
• start reading some of these other books yourself and share your excitement in a dinner table conversation