Getting teens hooked on reading: What public librarians can do for teachers today

Fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for The ALAN Review about the same topic I am addressing and updating today. Although the basic philosophical principles discussed in that article are still effective, the processe we use to help teachers help lifelong reading among students have changed as a flow of advances in media formats and other technologies. For instance, in 1987 a number of libraries still had card catalogs, while today it would be difficult to find a library without an online catalog and patron Internet service. Audiovisuals have greatly improved in variety of controls availability and formats. These ultimate parts have greatly influenced how we be subservient to our public.

Even we librarians have changed our higher educational requirements to mirror these and other technological conditions. For example, taking computer research courses is now as important to a library step as learning collection development or reader advisory, and flat those classes incorporate computer instruction.

Despite the increased focus upon technology, those of us who work with children and teenagers in libraries still investigation their literature, promote it, and direct the eye forward to cooperating with teachers and place of education librarians to help students learn about and benefit from it. The essential part of the matter is that teachers and youth librarians subserve the same clientele and one as well as the other understand the importance of volumes and reading. During the times when seminary is not in session-weekdays after hours, weekends, evenings, seminary vacations, and in some cases upon certain holidays, students have the option of accessing the public library for educational, informational, recreational and research drifts Providing avenues for them to learn about the library, what works and other materials they can find there, and encouraging them to participate in library programs and activities can interstice with classroom objectives, extend their use of and in all senses to the written word, and lead them upon a path of lifelong reading and library usage beyond their secondary seminary years.

Programs/Services Public Librarians Can Provide Booktalking

A booktalking program is individual of the most effective ways for public librarians to reach teenagers. When a public librarian tend hitherwards to a classroom or academy library to visit with scholars it provides an opportunity for the librarian to give a brief orientation to the library in general, to share information about library programs and activities specifically for teen and to introduce sample titles from the young adult collection [i]or[/i] part of to the other booktalks.

Teachers and gymnasium librarians can likewise incorporate booktalking techniques to aid reading to students. Booktalking is attractive because it can be done for a large cluster a small group or flat one-on-one. It is an effective means for connecting teen and volumes

According to Jennifer Bromann in Booktalking That Works, a certain quantity of purposes for booktalking include building public library and seminary relationships and cooperation, and strengthening ties with place of educations school librarians and teachers. However, the greatest in quantity important goal is to secure teens who do not read to do in like manner Bromann observes: "The goal of booktalking is not necessarily to barter particular books as much as it is to exchange the idea of reading. The point is to leave each listener with a good impression of works and the library, even if they at no time pick up a book you run over them about. Booktalking is not about making them read. When volume report time comes around, however, pupils may be looking for that volume they vaguely remember hearing about" (11)

If you are not familiar with the art of booktalking, perhaps you are wondering what a booktalk is. Think of it simply as a commercial for a work told in storytelling form on the contrary leaving the listener hanging. You might also compare it to the trailers shown in movie theaters for forthcoming films. The point is to entice pupils to check out the works and find out what happens for themselves, simply because their curiosity has been sparked.

There have been scarcely any changes in how school booktalking programs have been done in the last fifteen years. Still, there are many more and a wider variety of YA volumes from which librarians can fix upon for presentations. The presentations allow librarians to inform learners about the latest library holdings, of the like kind as audiobooks, other kinds of audiovisuals, popular teen magazines, and special formats like graphic novels, in addition to mainstream fiction and nonfiction.

Librarians can pattern booktalks for students, and a certain quantity of teachers give students the option to near booktalks en lieu of work reports. A few students have taken this individual step farther, like the Coalition of Teen Advisors (http:// www.teenmatrix.org/) at the Chandler Public Library in Arizona, who taped themselves performing booktalks which are shown upon the local cable television station as well as upon the in-school channel.

Since the Accelerated Reader Program has become a turn in many schools, librarians can use booktalking to help help the book choices. A number of gymnasiums in Mesa provide us at the public library with binders of their AR lists for a like reason that students can find the volumes in our library as well as in their seminary libraries. Some teachers request booktalks based upon the AR books and I then tailor my presentations to those titles. You can ask your librarian if this might be an option if you are doing AR.