Let's turn to the gospel of Matthew for this week's blog post.   In chapter 25, verse 29 Matthew--according to the King James version, at least--said For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.  I assume this applies to girls as well.

St. Matthew is often shown reading, but St. Jerome is the patron saint of libraries.  

St. Jerome is often depicted with a skull symbolizing the death of the fixed book exchange.

Are you wondering what any of this has to do with fostering reading culture?  Some of you might have guessed that I am leading into a discussion of The Matthew Effect, which Wikipedia describes as an "accumulated advantage sometimes summarized by the adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".  In 1983, Walberg and Tsai applied the Matthew effect to reading, exploring the reciprocal relationship between time spent reading and increased reading skill.  While the Matthew Effect as a factor in basic reading skills development has been largely discredited in literacy research (e.g. Gustavsson, Kempt and Samuelson, 2011) researchers continue to study the differences in achievement between children who have the advantage of language and print rich environments and those who have not.

I find this research very hopeful:  if environmental factors involving vocabulary and print exposure have a substantial impact on students' academic success, even if decoding time-on-task has been limited, then what better place than libraries to facilitate that exposure?

Fostering Literacies is one of the themes in the growth framework of Leading Learning:  Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada.  The standards indicate that, as we lead into the future, librarians will "work with the community to develop and promote literacy for all" and "lead the school time in designing learning for transliteracy".

How do we create the conditions for an active reading culture in our schools so that all students will have the skills and the drive to learn and know?  Not surprisingly, I had one colleague propose to me that the answer is the fixed book exchange, which ensures that reluctant readers select books each week.  (So they have them...but are they reading them?)

I return time and time again to the notion that a learning commons has be to more than a print repository.  Every morning, the Puntledge Park school library sees the same students flock in, select books, find a cozy spot and quietly read before classes begin.  When I started creating "provocations" at a table near the door in plain view from the hallway, I noticed that the not-so frequent flyers started paying us a visit in the morning.  Tables with Plus Plus blocks, gear kits, "blocks with bling", etc. invite students to see the learning commons as a place of active construction.  When students aren't sure how to go about creating with the materials I toss them the manuals.  They learn and then they teach others, and everyone adds their own ideas to the creation.  

Don't even get me started on these two.

In Term II, I started a Diary Book Club (affectionately known by some students as Diarrhea Club) in response to the ongoing enthusiasm for the Wimpy Kid, Dear Dumb Diary and Dork Diary franchises.  Students were asked to read any book in a journal or diary format (I included Cronin's Bug Diaries, nonfiction books about creating or writing in journals and anything else even remotely diary-oriented in order to appeal to a wide range of students). Each week, we shared a snack and a book discussion with a very simply format using this bookmark as a prompt for student discussion: Lunch Bunch Bookmark

For our culminating activity, students helped me weed some sad-looking books from the collection.  We upcycled them to create Smash Journals (see What is a Smash Book) using all kinds of beautiful scrapbooking materials.  In order to know how to create a smash journal--even I didn't really know for sure what we were going to do--students researched different tutorials and added promising ones to a curated Collection in Destiny Discover.  We ultimately went with this tutorial:

While this may look to the untrained observer like simple arts and crafts, Lofton (2017) points out that making activities promote information literacy, creativity, student choice, sharing, persistence, problem-solving, exploration, learning by doing.  

Smash Journal Creation in Action

I encourage you to explore the wonderful work of Melanie Mulcaster:  The Forest of Making to see dozens of examples of books paired with media and making to promote student engagement via choice, multiple modalities and hands-on activities across the literary genres.  I believe that when we give children exciting, compelling reasons to read, we foster literacy in the most meaningful, personal way.

Bibliography

Kempe, C., Eriksson-Gustavsson, A., & Samuelsson, S. (2011). Are There any Matthew     Effects in Literacy and Cognitive Development?. Scandinavian Journal Of Educational Research, 55(2), 181-196. doi:10.1080/00313831.2011.554699

Lofton, J. (2017). Students Are Makers! Building Information Literacy Skills Through Makerspace Programs. CSLA Journal, 40(2), 18-16.