Rebuilding After the COVID Fire Hit the Forest of Reading
by Diana Maliszewski
In this well documented paper Diana explores the impact the pandemic had on her family of schools’ participation in the long standing and successful OLA Forest of Reading program. Diana explains the many challenges faced by schools to fully engage learners in the traditional program. She documents the many concerns education leaders have with regard to the impact the pandemic has had on reading as well as the positive role school libraries have played.
Diana Maliszewski OCT, BA, BEd, MEd (she/her) is a teacher-librarian in the Toronto District School Board in Scarborough, Ontario. This is her twenty-fifth year in teaching, with twenty-four of those years working in a school library learning commons. Diana is the one of the vice-presidents of the Association for Media Literacy. She was the editor-in-chief of The Teaching Librarian, the award-winning official publication of the Ontario School Library Association, from 2006-2018 and now is a course instructor for the Teacher Librarianship Additional Qualification courses for York University and Queen’s University. She has presented workshops at conferences all over North America on topics such as gaming in education, graphic novels, popular culture, professional learning communities, and children’s literature. She has written five Treasure Mountain Canada papers, with two more planned for 2022.You can read her blog,
Monday Molly Musings, or catch her on Twitter as
@MzMollyTL.
Great to see your creativity in continuing to support the culture of reading in your school and district, Diana! Your experience in getting feedback to a group invitation mirrors mine. Creating professional books for the school library community is one thing I love to do. When I send out a group invitation to assist with reviewing papers, I rarely get a response; when I send personal emails, I get responses from almost every one I invite!
ReplyDeleteDianne, thanks for the encouraging words. We had to get creative during the most-intense time of the pandemic (I'm hesitant to say we are "post-pandemic" yet) and "necessity is the mother of invention". Yes, the "shoulder tap" is much more effective than the generalized announcement. The trick is then to find as many people to network with as possible so we aren't constantly relying on the same people all the time (and giving newer school library professionals a chance to participate). It's the "they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on" phenomenon (and advertising slogan!)
ReplyDeleteDiana M
Hello Dianne, I was very excited to read your article because the BC-equivalent of the Silver Birch Award (Red Cedar Award) has had a long tradition of celebration at our school in grades 4 & 5.
ReplyDeleteI really liked learning about how your student engagement functioned. We use mini-reports with 3 reasons why they enjoy/did not enjoy their book to verify readership. Your coordination of students with teachers is truly impressive! I do find that when I follow up with students who submit insufficient reviews (i.e. "the book was interesting") that I can get much richer feedback. I thought students who find writing challenging would prefer to record a video but found few took up this option (except by chance when it coincided with a classroom assignment!)
I am curious to know a bit more about what your Quiz Bowl Celebration looks like. The big draw was our Pizza Party with prize draws for qualifying students at the end of the year. This could not happen during COVID. While last year I was able to hold it again plus offer a pinata to the class who read the most, participation definitely dropped off as I feel the legacy of participation was disrupted. Do you have any new ideas percolating for this year?
Hi Amanda,
Delete(And no worries about the name - I like being in the same company as people like Dr. Oberg!)
Those mini-reports sound like they are a quick way to check whether students have read the books. Our conversations (to sign the passports) do take a lot longer but teachers have said that they adore this type of connection time and that when done with their own students, it helps inform their reading approaches for those students so much more than other means of evaluation.
You caught me a bit - I didn't include a lot about the Quiz Bowl or Red Maple Marketing in my TMC7 paper (partly because I was trying to abide by word counts!). Our Silver Birch Quiz Bowl consisted of a fiction quiz with buzzers (1 hour), lunch with an ice cream truck on site (1 hour), a non-fiction quiz (1 hour) and an author visit (1 hour). Include the traveling to and from the host school, that added up to an entire day. The pandemic-version of Quiz Bowl had the two quizzes and author visit, but all online. The dynamic was different. For Red Maple Marketing, we had the "Dragon's Den" type of promotion (5 min per team but during COVID it was 10 min per team) plus the author visit. We used to gather at a public library but did it online in 2022. Once again, the dynamic was different. The sharing of the "spiels" went smoother, and the advertising executives were able to judge from the comfort of their offices, but the "buzz" wasn't there. For 2023, I will go back to Harbourfront with my students for the OLA-official-in-person celebration AND I'll see about going back to the old ways - they love shopping so maybe a vendor or two to add in? If I think of anything different, I'll let you know!
Diana M
I love this effort to reinvent the forest. Having the readers heavily involved in this reinvention is critical to its success and the documentation of impact critical I predict that you will settle on a continuous virtual reinvention will leave the old methods no longer the one way of doing things.
DeleteDavid, I have a lovely story to share related to this. We start our Forest of Reading program in January because that's the official launch date AND it gives staff members enough time to read the books. I have a student who approached me two weeks ago (mid-October) to offer me a "deal": he'll pass me the Red Maple nominee he grabbed from the public library, I can have a day to read it, and then we chat the next day. I appreciate his enthusiasm but I had to remind him I was working on report cards. I'm glad the students are eager for a partial return to the aspects they love about the way we do the Forest of Reading program at my school (which is the conversations).
DeleteOops, I am so sorry, Diana, for mistyping your name in the previous post.
ReplyDeleteHi Diana,
ReplyDeleteIn our district we have been running a competition built around BC's Red Cedar award for years. One of my tasks with a group of TLs in inner city schools is to diversify this competition from purely recall to something more hands on. Your descriptions of what you usually do with the forest of reading have beem amazing to kick start my thinking in this area. I know that isn't the true focus of your paper, but it was the takeaway for me because it connected so vividly to a problem we have had envisioning what an alternative to the competition could look like.
The pandemic forced us online which opened new possibilities as we didn't have to gather in schools and do a field trip, we got to have people compete while on dance competitions and who had moved districts, but it was still essentially a case of recall quotes and ideas from the books. This benefits a certain type of learner - one like me who has great recall - but not necessarily comprehension or understanding of the text. There has been resistance to change because this is how we have always done it, but now the pandemic has forced at least a little change the opportunity to push for more presents itself.
Joseph, I'm so glad that my paper accidentally inspired this thinking. Please let me know how it goes and what works and didn't!
DeleteI really appreciated reading about how you engaged (and continue to engage) your school community in the Forest of Reading. In particular, I have noticed that the electronic versions of my books did not go out as frequently as I would like. I also have a lower percentage of participation; something I would like to tackle this year. Having the in-person Forest of reading celebration may help this year. Hope to see you there, my friend.
ReplyDeleteJennifer, my students and teachers have already told me that we ARE GOING to the Forest of Reading Festival. If it runs, we will be there.
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