2.1 Literature
Candidates are familiar with a wide range of children’s, young adult, and professional literature in multiple formats and languages to support reading for information, reading for pleasure, and reading for lifelong learning.
2010 ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians
“It is not true we have only one life to love, if we can read, we can live as many lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” -- S. I. Hayakawa
Reading for pleasure is the first building block to creating lifelong learners. In the Children’s Literature course, SLM 503, our task was to read 25 books and magazines from across genres and create an annotated bibliography. This bibliography became my “Book of Books” and a popular choice during independent reading time in my classroom. Although these were middle school students, the quality of these award-winning books – which I included on the shelf – inspired many of them to revisit picture books and children’s literature. Reading just for fun was rediscovered! |
I passionately believe that from the earliest stages when you read to a child, language connections and pathways are formed in their brains. These connections give them an advantage in every academic endeavor of their future. When children begin to read for themselves, there is a magical moment when they experience the feeling of becoming lost in the book and learn the pleasure of reading. Children then begin to realize they can discover new worlds and information by exploring other genres and formats. The final step is the metacognitive realization that one can always learn whatever it is they he or she needs to know if they are able to read.
Both the Children’s and Young Adult Literature courses nudged me into genres that I would not normally choose when left to my own devices. These courses reinforced to me that books, reading, and multiple perspectives are the threads that develop personal learning. I also believe that no child “hates to read,” but that he or she is simply reading the wrong thing. It is my job as a school library media specialist to help each student find the right book. As I move into the library, I will continue this endeavor of annotating the books I read, but I will do it in electronic form. I plan to have a blog on my website that contains my annotations and allows a moderated discussion about books between students. Fiction, nonfiction, electronic, or print – finding the student’s interest to spark the quest of reading for information and the love of reading for pleasure is a vital role of the school library media specialist to create lifelong learners.
Both the Children’s and Young Adult Literature courses nudged me into genres that I would not normally choose when left to my own devices. These courses reinforced to me that books, reading, and multiple perspectives are the threads that develop personal learning. I also believe that no child “hates to read,” but that he or she is simply reading the wrong thing. It is my job as a school library media specialist to help each student find the right book. As I move into the library, I will continue this endeavor of annotating the books I read, but I will do it in electronic form. I plan to have a blog on my website that contains my annotations and allows a moderated discussion about books between students. Fiction, nonfiction, electronic, or print – finding the student’s interest to spark the quest of reading for information and the love of reading for pleasure is a vital role of the school library media specialist to create lifelong learners.
 This portfolio and the artifacts contained herein by Amy Soldavini are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. |
Revised July 2013
