Building Reading Communities

The school library can be the place to create a community that will help students cultivate a lifelong love of reading. Students need to see how they can benefit from being well read. Most school libraries promote reading, but often these activities do not teach reading for understanding. They do not create reading communities.

A yellow-brick-road mural with each brick symbolizing every completed book enabling Toto and Dorothy to find their way to Oz may be fun. However, the energy and time expended in creating an elaborate display could be better spent creating a reading community.

The Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, KS, has gone beyond the yellow brick road, adapting a literacy program in the last 20 years called REAL (Reading for Enjoyment and Appreciation of Literature). This program, offered in each of the school district's elementary school libraries, introduces students to many different types of reading materials and encourages kids to talk about what they are reading.

The REAL teacher is supervised by the library media specialist. Together they adapt and change the program annually to include new and award-winning materials, current items, and resources that refer to topics being studied each year.

For example, if the school is doing a semester-long unit studying ancient cultures, the REAL class will likely include books on that topic in its historical fiction genre unit. Because the library media specialists hold regular planning meetings with all classroom and special area teachers, they are informed of curriculum topics. This allows them to advise and discuss possible adaptations to the prescribed REAL curriculum with the REAL teacher.

Visitors to Blue Valley will see the REAL teacher working with each class in the school every week. (Attendees of the American Association of School Librarians conference in Kansas City this fall will have an opportunity to visit the district.) The REAL teacher works with half of the class for 30 minutes while the remainder of the class participates in a computer literacy program also sponsored by the elementary school library. Students then switch places. The REAL teacher reads and discusses a book, nursery rhyme, article, or poem for 10 to 15 minutes and students are allowed to read independently for 15 to 20 minutes. Students may bring something to read for pleasure. The time is not considered study hall and students are not permitted to do homework. The REAL teacher also has books and magazines that reflect what was discussed.

Students read silently during independent reading times and the REAL teacher also reads something that she enjoys. With the youngest children, students may quietly read aloud in pairs. On some occasions, students participate in readers' theatre and choral reading to enhance their understanding. All of the books discussed in the program may be checked out in the library media center. Older students take notes on call numbers and authors to enable them to find the books in the center. A younger student might simply ask the library media specialist for the 'blue book about the cow.' Because the library media specialist is familiar with what is being read in REAL that week, she would know what book the child is referring to and can always help. The program sparks interest and a desire to learn how to find books in the library.

Teachers have noted that students over time become incredibly knowledgeable about children's books and authors. They know what to look for in the media center and have many ideas about what they would like to read.

Students also enjoy Nesting Groups, another program recently implemented in some of the district's elementary libraries. The program helps engage students in multiage level discussions about books, requiring students to identify and define eight good character traits. Nesting Groups also promote the transfer of ideas found in books to actions in their lives and break down large school populations into more intimate groups to enhance a feeling of belonging.

In this program, every adult in the school is asked to lead a Nesting Group. The groups are quite small, including no more than 10 or 11 students, with one or two students from kindergarten through fifth grade. A book is featured monthly that illustrates a particular character trait. Dr. Seuss's Horton the Elephant is used to illustrate responsibility; The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson is used to describe compassion. When the Nesting Groups meet, the chosen book is read and discussed. Students then participate in an activity to understand the character trait. A bibliography is sent home with each child so that parents or students can read and discuss more books that illustrate the virtue. Because every child has read and discussed the same book and character trait, classroom teachers are able to follow up with further activities that month.

Students, parents, and teachers have responded very positively to this program. In collaboration with teachers, the media specialist creates monthly reading lists, activity suggestions, discussion guides, and bibliographies and has the task of finding enough copies of each title, usually accomplished with grant funds and through interlibrary loans.

These two programs are examples of what can be done to promote reading for understanding and to build a community of readers in an elementary setting. Programs such as these are being adapted across the nation for use in secondary schools. A logical progression from the small group programs is the popular 'One Book, One School' idea. Every student and adult reads the same book and participates in discussion groups. Some communities have taken this as a districtwide initiative and have developed lists of books on similar themes read throughout the school district with small group discussions at all grade levels. School board members, parents, and local business owners are among those participating in these dialogues about books. Student-organized book clubs, lunch chats, and teacher book clubs are becoming more prevalent in schools. Some secondary schools are beginning to convene online book chats that build on their students' expertise and fascination with the Internet.

Students become surrounded by a reading culture that encourages them to read and talk about what they are reading. And it's contagious. They pass their newly discovered passion along to their parents and teachers. Parents are amazed at their children's breadth of knowledge about books. Teachers who weren't voracious readers begin trying to 'catch up.' Elementary students tell adults in their lives about the recent award winners, the poetry of Langston Hughes, and the new biographies in the library media center. Secondary students talk to parents and teachers about the fascinating book the entire community is reading. And, of course, this is the key to it all, since reading communities do not develop in schools where adults don't read.

Sharon Coatney is Libraries Unlimited's acquisitions editor for school library media center publications. She is a former teacher librarian and past president of the American Association of School Librarians.