The Joy of Reading and Intermediate Students
by Angela Jackmann
This paper, presented by a teacher-librarian from the Peel District School Board, Ontario, explores strategies the teacher-librarian can use to encourage the joy of reading for pleasure with intermediate students and teachers, and why is it important. The significance of fostering a love for reading among intermediate students is paramount as reading impacts academics in many ways. This paper explores strategies that teacher-librarians can utilize to encourage reading for pleasure among intermediate students and teachers and underscores the importance of such initiatives. It also suggests where robust funding might be applied, how a policy of protected time for reading for pleasure could be employed, and how equity of access can impact student reading.
Angela - hello again!
ReplyDeleteThanks for representing York University's TL AQ program by sharing this investigation of yours with school library professionals across the country. It's an important one. The joy of reading should be a TL's "bread and butter" but fostering it, especially among intermediate students, is no "piece of cake". (It must be close to dinner as I'm writing this commentary - sorry for all the food references!) I'm impressed that, despite the incredible results shown on the graphs on page 2 of your paper (wow, do your grade 5s like to read or what!?!), you chose to look into why there's such a marked decrease in borrowing books for Grade 6, 7, and 8 students. Your paper matches nicely with the one Ian Bates wrote on the "Decline by Nine" and similar observations about the drop in reading engagement. This is such a solidly researched inquiry; you've found powerful studies to back up your assertion that reading for fun is vital. Thank you for the reminder about "negative pleasure reading" and that we don't have to tie every single book we read into a lesson or report card expectation. Sometimes I worry I'm "not using time wisely" when it's "just a read aloud", but your research reassures me. Those numbers in Grade 6 and 8 are impressive. Do you have theories why the Grade 7 numbers did not go as high? Which strategy was most productive? Or is it a combination of many approaches?
Finally: like in one of Joseph Jeffery's papers, I want to thank you for being transparent about the use of AI in writing and revising. We need to mention it to open the conversations around ethical use.
Diana Maliszewski
Hello Diana! So nice that you remembered me! And thank you for the encouragement in taking this inquiry past course. I do have ideas why there were differences in sign outs for the different grades. I'd be happy to discus them on Saturday! I think these ideas also account for the high numbers in grade 5! I beleive just sharing my research with teachers was the most effective strategy I used as it gave them permission to let kids just read in class, and also convinced them to keep a weekly book exchange time.
DeleteAs for using AI to write my paper, I will say that all the research had been done prior to the use of AI and it still took my 6 hours to revise and edit my paper!
Angela, thank you so much for bringing this topic into the forefront. I've often wondered if the introduction of rotary subjects, and lack of collaborative time for intermediate teachers is part of the problem with reading engagement. Wouldn't it be grand if teacher-librarians could co-teach cross-curricular projects that focused on independent novel choices -- perhaps in a genre or with another comparable criteria? Like -- Canadian history, or athletes or , etc. Looking forward to talking more with you about this.
ReplyDeleteHi Alanna!
DeleteYes rotary can be a big problem but I work in a K-8 school so I feel like I should still be able to work with all the teachers. I did go to a workshop at OLA this week that talked about how TL’s can really help with Strand A of many of the curriculum documents as these are transferable skills. I’m going to take that back to my school and see if I can engage those classes even
more!
Can’t wait to see you!