As many of you are already aware I was a Teacher-librarian at Narara Public School New South Wales Australia.
I was connected to the Department of Education NSW email and I signed all of my emails with my name, position on staff and a little personal vision statement which says “Turning learners into Readers”.
This is how I see the role of the teacher-librarian in the school setting.
By Reading (with a capital R ) I mean a worthwhile pleasurable activity which enhances the readers life.
The ability to read well is the doorway to all learning. If read well you can learn anything of interest and become anyone in a story.
The program I taught to all of the pupils at my school , Kindergarten to Year 6 included an awareness of library skills and research skills
with a sprinkling of computer skills to serve these purposes.
However I still see the role of the teacher -Librarian as the “promotions director” of Reading.
When the children begin Year 1 and they are just beginning readers I introduced a series of authors to entice the children’s interest in
story.
My favourite is still Anna Fienberg and her marvellous Tashi adventure stories. I read the first one to them and they are hooked.
‘Well, it was like this. Come and I’ll tell you about the time I tricked the last dragon of all.’ So says the daring hero, Tashi, in his first book of adventures. In the first story in this book, Jack has a new friend called Tashi, who comes from a place very far away. Learn how Tashi escaped from a war lord and flew to this country on a swan…..from the Tashi website.
There are 20 adventure stories in the series and most of the year 1’s try to read them all before the end of the year!
So as children progress through the grades I continue to “feed ” them books I know they will want to read.
I was recently interviewed by a Journalist Lisa Power from the Daily Telegraph Sydney about “what are the main activities that teachers use to teach reading so the children become “readers”.”
Her newspaper was promoting reading by offering parents to buy miniature copies of popular tiles for a mere $2.00 a copy.
My answer to that question was that teachers use all sorts of structured learning activities including phonics ,whole words and language based learning . However they are not the only ones involved in “turning learners into readers’ and although their input was vitally important in the process the children who become avid readers are the ones who have already begun their journey long before they even get to school.
They will have begun the journey with their parents who have read to them since they were babies on their laps. Their parents also encouraged their language skills by speaking to them from day they were born as if they understood every word they said not mind-numbing or dumbing down their language with baby talk or gooo goo gaa gaa talk but real language about anything and everything.
They would have also sung to them nursery rhymes and little cultural ditties which babies love to listen too .
In other words parents are their child’s first teachers.
How babies and toddlers are encouraged in language and read to daily will definitely be an influence in the development of their early literacy skills.
So you see how you raise a reader begins with you .
It then continues in conjunction with their teachers , not in isolation on your own or expecting that you have no part to play in the process.
Your support of your babies and toddlers in the learning process before school is vital for them to become not only successful in reading but becoming a Reader …for Life!
teachbabytotalk 