Late in Term 1, we ran a couple of introductory sessions to staff on: “What is a classroom library?” Sally showed us some video/photo footage of different classroom libraries and classes using Independent Reading from schools she had worked with across Western Melbourne. She also discussed the data that showed that this region in Melbourne made the biggest growth in reading results according to NAPLAN testing across all Victorian schools.
Groups of teachers had a go at sorting and categorizing a selection of books – a task that students would undertake after they had borrowed many books from the school library for their class library. In their groups, they discussed how they might go about the process of sorting according to the age levels of their students, genres of texts, series, authors, topics, etc. They also talked about what explicit teaching may need to occur and what questions they may ask to get students to reflect on why they may have grouped books in a certain way or to assist them in book sorting. In groups, teachers brainstormed what benefits they thought a classroom library would have and what were the questions that were coming to mind about this approach to reading.
We then asked for volunteers who felt they could start this process of setting up their classroom library early Term 2. The expectation was that everyone would be involved but the Literacy committee thought we would stagger it so the early starters could then mentor those that would begin later. 60% of class teachers wanted to start straight away.