Chapters International

Overview:

Every child deserves the opportunity to become a lifelong reader and books are the teacher’s tool to make that happen. This course will show you how to redesign your book spaces, reorganize your books, and reimagine how these spaces can work together across the entire school to make each teacher’s book supply seem endless in the eyes of a reader. Teachers must have easy access to what they need when they need it, because in the life of a reader the right book at the right time makes all the difference. During each session, we will explore photos, videos, book lists, and a step-by-step process to get you started right away. From design, to inventory, to curating, organizing, purchasing, and using these books in the classroom, Iwill support you in making the most of what you already have and maximize every dollar you spend.

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Create a vision for your school’s book spaces and plan how they can work together to maximize book access.
Audit your current inventory to determine the texts you need and the texts that are not being utilized and need to be reorganized to maximize book access.
Reorganize texts to support your instructional model and curricular goals.
Involve your students in the process of curating and organizing your book collection to help them develop the habits and dispositions of a reader.
Learn different ways of layering and organizing digital texts.

Session 1:

This session will review the research on how increased access to books promotes literacy development. We will provide supports for you to think about opportunities to create shared book spaces designed to refresh and rotate classroom book inventory to meet the evolving needs of your students.

Session 2:

This session will provide you with a step-by-step process to audit your current collection to identify types of texts that are missing and collections of texts that are not being utilized. We will study ways to reorganize texts to maximize student access as well as discuss how to get what you need within your budget.

Session 3:

This session will focus on how to organize books to support your instructional model and your curricular goals within the gradual release of responsibility. We will reflect on the role of texts as an instructional scaffold for students and how we can use texts to bridge our curriculum throughout the year.

Session 4:

This session will focus on how to involve students in the curation and design of a classroom library. Organizing our books into collections that reflect our students and involving them in the process helps them develop the habits and dispositions of a reader. We will discuss moves to broaden how students think about text selection and to help them find books they love within and beyond the classroom walls.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Pe-K-6th grade educators, librarians, literacy leaders, teachers, administrators - anyone who is involved with literacy.

CLARE LANDRIGAN

Clare Landrigan is a staff developer who is still a teacher at heart. After years serving as an educator and administrator in elementary public schools, she is now a literacy consultant, spending her days partnering with school systems to implement best practices in the field of literacy. She believes that effective professional development includes side-by-side teaching, analysis of student work, mutual trust, respect, and a good dose of laughter. Clare is the coauthor of, It’s All About the Books: How to Create Bookrooms and Classroom Libraries That Inspire Readers and Assessment in Perspective. She is on the board of The Book Love Foundation and leads the Book Love Summer Book Club. She blogs about books and the art of teaching on her website www.clarelandrigan.com and is co-authoring a book, The Possibilities of Poetry, with Aeriale Johnson to be published by Stenhouse in 2024.