Category Archives: Parents

Year 3 share their Guided Inquiry experience with their parents

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Last Friday afternoon two classes of excited Year 3 students came to the IRC with their parents to show them their work. After the teachers spoke of how the Guided Inquiry process had worked for them in practice, some of the students’ Vokis were demonstrated on the whiteboard. The parents then spent time with their child looking at their bookwork, their PowerPoints and their Vokis.

The students had used the Guided Inquiry process, with Teacher Librarian support, to investigate their personally selected aspect of the human body. Besides learning about the Human Body they also learned a lot of reading skills, writing skills, thinking skills and ICT skills.

Books were the main source of information as our IRC collection has so many good books suitable for this age group. The students read a lot about the human body before selecting their favourite aspect to study. Writing their own questions was a lot of fun and some fabulous ideas emerged!

The practical science experiments for this unit were also suggested and created by the students!

Finally after they had investigated and written answers to their questions, they made a PowerPoint to teach the other students about their work. Then, for fun, they made a Voki summary. This also incidentally taught them a lot about spelling and punctuation as they tried to make their computer generated avatars ‘speak’ their presentations.

Cardboard projects of the past cannot be compared to this exciting learning process!

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New research report on libraries and reading

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Research into Parents, Children, Libraries, and Reading by Carolyn Miller, Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie and Kristen Purcell was released on 1 May by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The findings and report cover:

  • Library visits by children
  • Parents themselves are considerably more likely than other adults to use library services
  • Parents are more likely to be interested in expanding library services and adding future tech-related services
  • Mothers stand out when it comes to reading and libraries
  • Lower income parents are more likely to view library services as very important

The vast majority of parents of minor children — children younger than 18 — feel libraries are very important for their children. That attachment carries over into parents’ own higher-than-average use of a wide range of library services.

…This report is part of a broader effort by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that is exploring the role libraries play in people’s lives and in their communities.

Towards Reading – preschool literacy support activities

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Although this site is mainly for parents and teachers of preschool age children, it would also be invaluable for teachers of students with learning difficulties. The activity cards for pre-reading awareness are delightful, with very creative ideas for making things to promote a desire to read or understand the purpose and need for text. (Also useful for a grandmother’s toolkit!)

School Holidays! Celebrate the National Year of Reading with special activities

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Why not use these holidays to inspire a love of reading. Activities that bring a story to life can also bring a family closer together. The Book Chook blog has a post this week full of ideas of how to do this.

Zoe Toft says she “Plays by the book” because

  • it’s fun!
  • it gives me a focus and outlet for my desire to be creative
  • it helps me find a mutually enjoyable way of being with the kids
  • it shows the kids how much I value the book
She goes on to explain ways to bring a book to life with three failsafe activities
  • getting out the playmobil and make a landscape to mirror what is in the book
  • using the same medium as the illustrator to do your own pictures
  • baking a cake based on an image in the book

Grandparents’ Day: Books & reading focus in the IRC

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Thursday 24 May was Grandparents Day – It has been a busy week in the IRC!
Grandparents’ Day is always a special time here. Students from the P-6 section of the school eagerly bring their grandparents into the IRC to share this amazing place with them. The whole building is filled with children sitting with their grandparents looking at books, displays or just relaxing together.

We boost our collection each year by offering books for sale for grandparents to donate back to the IRC on behalf of their grandchild. This year, again, we received more than two thirds of our selected new books back as donations.
Many grandparents were very interested in the direction taken with Information (Non Fiction) books for children these days, with their many illustrations and limited but pertinent text. All of these particular books were sold quickly and added to our collection.