Shenandoah Shares

Reading Celebrations, Books, Fun, and Literacy!

Greetings fellow teacher-librarians and lovers of books! I am a library media specialist at Strasburg High School in Shenandoah County Virginia! I am seeking like minded individuals to share reading celebrations ideas, powerful reading incentives, and fun stuff that has been met with success with your students! Let’s encourage reading for fun and enjoyment…literacy….what better way to start?

Celebrate Reading! Click here for secondary reading celebration ideas!

Welcome to Shenandoah Shares!!! As a library media specialist, I am all too aware of how challenging it has become to motivate students to read for enjoyment. There is just too much competition in the electronic world, not to mention sports, hanging with friends and after school jobs! HELP!! After struggling with new library software and feeling pretty disenchanted with the whole enchilada, I decided to take a good look at WHY I am here! My passion has been and continues to be, instilling a love of reading in young adults. After reading an article in the March, 2006 American Libraries entitled “The Greatest Challenge” by Michael Gorman, I am more convinced than ever, that our “greatest challenge” as teacher-librarians is indeed, to promote literacy and a love of reading: The decline in literacy is a grave problem in our society and libraries of all kinds must be an important part of the solution.

Using technology as a tool while teaching research skills and the importance of citations and evaluation of both print and online sources will continue to be vital in our library curriculum, however, as we become increasingly mired in electronics and library software, it is important to take a giant step backward, take a deep breath, and “hold the phone”….why are we here?????? READING! READING! READING! If our students leave us having never read and ENJOYED reading a book, what is the point?

And so….here goes…my first blog…please join me!

If you have a neat POSITIVE idea for a reading celebration, FUN activity, or would like to share some cutting edge ideas from a class or conference, please take a moment to share. Have you had success with a particular genre, author, or title? Do you have a fun idea to promote library use and reading?? Support the cause and jump right in…let’s hear those amazing ideas!!

Let’s get started…

SHS had a “Feed the Need to Read” reading celebration. VERY SIMPLE: check out a book, read it (or at least tell me you did), fill out an entry form and put it in the pot. You may enter as many times as you want. After about six weeks, we drew about 30 names. We got a deal on pizza, served soda and candy bars…yum, yum…The big thing was, we served this on the stage in the cafeteria. The winners had their special meal during lunch and the other kids were like “wow…what’s up with that???” This year, we hope that all of those folks will “Feed the Need to Read” and enter the contest! It was FUN, QUICK, EASY and we had over 200 entries….we WILL do it again.

PLEASE CLICK HERE AND ADD YOUR COMMENTS...looking for fabulous and even not so fabulous ideas!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

New Manga/Graphic Novel Club at SHS


The library media center at Strasburg High School will be starting a Manga/Graphic Novel club this fall (2008). This is a new club and we are looking for suggestions and ideas to make this an exciting and fun organization. If you have some thoughts on how you would like to see this club work, please leave a comment!

3 comments:

Shenandoah said...

Please suggest titles to add to the manga/graphic novel collection. Are there any new series out there that we should know about?

Magicalteacher said...

I imagine you make your class fun! You did a wonderful Photo Story yesterday!!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a cool idea Clarisse! Let me know how it works out and maybe we can do a watered down beginners version at the elementary level!
kristy.