News and Issues for K-12 education from School Library Journal
Longer Hours in MA By Staff - 09/01/2007
Ten more schools in Massachusetts will extend their days this fall, practically doubling the number of schools statewide that have taken this route to improve academic performance. More
It’s Showtime! By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 09/01/2008
Our colleague Yvonne has two passions—storytelling and young children. Meeting with 20 children twice a week for a month, Yvonne transforms a classroom of children into a theatrical troupe performing such favorites as Swimmy by Leo Lionni and Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr. During the fun of performing a favorite book, children’s early literacy skills—especially thei...
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SLJ Talks to Teen Philanthropist Sarasi Jayaratne By Debra Lau Whelan - 07/09/2008
Sarasi Jayaratne isn’t your average 18-year-old. When a tsunami struck Sri Lanka in 2004, she began collecting books to create classroom libraries in her parents’ native country. Four years later, Jayaratne’s efforts have turned into a major project and her very own successful charity, Keep Reading.
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First Steps: A Little DAP Will Do Ya By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 07/01/2008
Best practice to a youth librarian is using lots of songs in storytimes for babies and repeating them each week. Best practice is choosing books about trucks and teddy bears for two-year-olds. The early childhood educators among us would be more precise: they would call these strategies developmentally appropriate practice.
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First Steps: Play It Again By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 05/01/2008
A quote from George Bernard Shaw hangs in our office, guiding our daily interactions: “We don’t quit playing because we grow old; we grow old because we quit playing.” These days, we feel a strong need to defend playtime for children, too. According to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, today’s children have less time to play than children of pre...
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The Evidence-Based Manifesto for School Librarians By Ross Todd - 04/01/2008
Every fall, School Library Journal hosts a national Leadership Summit that brings together a mix of school librarians, administrators, other educators, researchers, and university professors, as well as policy makers and elected officials. While the topics change, the Summit always focuses on an issue of critical importance to school librarians.
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First Steps: Sweet Treats By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 03/01/2008
“The first sound a child hears is actually a poem, the rhythmic, rhyming beat-beat-beat of a mother’s heart,” writes Jim Trelease in his introduction to Jack Prelutsky’s classic anthology, Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Knopf, 1986). Trelease, the author of The Read-Aloud Handbook: Sixth Edition (Penguin, 2006), adds that this early experience “sets the stag...
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Practically Paradise Diane Chen, Librarian, Hickman Elementary School, Nashville, Tennessee March 6, 2007 The Perfect School Library
Welcome to the first posting of this new blog for SLJ. I appreciate the simplicity of... More
Podcasts are a great way to expand learning beyond the classroom or library. Here are more recommendations from Tech Chicks Anna Adam and Helen Mowers, following up their Dec. 2007 article Listen Up!
Gr 3-5–Join Chef J, and actor, and Master Chef Soufflé, a puppet, as they teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of fractions while cooking up some tasty treats with their young guest host, Carlos.
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As part of Auburn Library's (CA) summer reading program "Catch the Reading Bug!" artist Kurt Barton fashioned this child-sized beehive, along with supersized ants, a centipede, dragonflies, and bees, all from found materials.
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