SLJ Talks to Joanne Streamo, Media Specialist

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!

Laura B. Weiss -- School Library Journal, 8/9/2006

How do you get reluctant readers to embrace books? Joanne Streamo, a middle school media specialist at Ravenscroft School, a private K–12 school in Raleigh, NC, thinks she has a solution. Last month, at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in San Diego, CA, Streamo demonstrated how she engages students in reading by videotaping them reading excerpts from books. Streamo explains to SLJ how she came up with the idea and how the kids have responded. To watch the videos, visit www.ravenscroft.org/middleschool/bookreviews/default.htm.

How important is reading in your school?

Over the last number of years, I was fortunate that our administration agreed that reading was an important part of our school days. Every middle school child comes to the library one day a week with one of their classroom teachers. We devote an entire period to reading. We promote new books and give them some idea of what to read. The [classroom] teacher also reads and models reading. We have an adult section to promote books for the teachers to read.

How did you come up with the idea of taping kids?

Children love to hear what other kids are recommending. If a kid says it's wonderful, they are much more likely to read it, too. I was watching how much they enjoy all the tech and [asked] why not use the tech to entice them to read the book?

It's one more way to get them interested, especially those kids who are reluctant readers. We just asked for volunteers to do this project. They were all jumping at it. They liked videotaping one another. "You can videotape me, and I'll videotape you." It really got them excited about doing it and being able to watch one another.

What about the actual filming?

I work very closely with our instructional tech specialist, Gary Duggan. He was part of this, too. I would go in and videotape classes doing things like science reports and show the videos to other classes. I would notice that the kids were really excited about the videotaping. Kids asked, "Can I help?" We [started having them] videotape one another reading and using the books they talk about to entice other kids to read the book. We started it this year and we would like to take it a step forward and have them do some editing. There's a continuum of the reading to the tech part. We put it on the Web so all the kids have access to it. We use it for orientation for new kids.

Has instant messaging, social networking, and other technologies made it more difficult to get kids excited about books?

It is increasingly more difficult to get kids involved in books. Their first inclination is to get on the Internet and Google. It's hard to buck that. I try very hard to keep the books going and to have them be interested in books.

At NECC, who attended your poster session?

A variety of people. Gary and I were both doing it. We were both surprised that there was such a lot of interest. I would say there was a mixture of classroom teachers and librarians. Librarians said this wasn't something they had thought about before. They'd ask Gary some of the technical questions. They did seem to be interested in the idea. It's relatively simple.

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