Fostering a Reading Culture

Book Fairs: The Past, Present and Future

As we descended into the Covid Pandemic, one of the many heart breaking cancellations was that of the beloved book fair.  In terms of fostering a reading culture in our school, book fairs are used as anchor points throughout the year to build excitement in the community and to showcase the joy that books bring children (and adults!).  Miller and Bass describe leadership in libraries as being, “about recognizing the opportunities that abound in school libraries and making the most of them to bring about changes that will empower and support your students as learners” (Miller & Bass, 2019, p. 11) and book fairs are a tool that creates these opportunities.

Our first fall term back in 2020 saw many, if not all I assume, schools scrambling to figure out how to host a book fair virtually.  There was radio silence on the side of the Grand Vizier that is Scholastic Inc. I had reached out to them to see what would be possible and I did not hear back from them for almost 2 months.  They too were scrambling.

I imagine it took many IT teams and epic stretches of the imagination to cobble together what became the first ever virtual book fair in my school’s history.  The disappointment was palpable in the classrooms.  The students had to resign themselves yet again to what everyone kept refereeing to as “the new normal” that felt anything but.  Even the most staunch of big-book-company-critics among the staff and parents were lamenting the change in implementation.  However, the minds at Scholastic figured it out and we proceeded with a very successful fair from the comfort of our own couches.  The experience really showed me, and certain aforementioned critics, that the jolt that students get out of these book fairs is really important, year after year, to incite devoted readers and inspire reluctant ones.

As a new teacher librarian 5 years back being introduced to our school’s collection, it was brought to my attention that the shelves and book spines were teaming with that trademark red square and the emblazoned ‘S’.  Our school had been hosting 2 Scholastic book fairs per year and accumulating credits for future purchases while our library account was in arrears due to a lack of library budget.  The complaints, from the teachers who voiced them, were that the books were not great quality and the content was sometimes vapid.  I took this to heart and when a savvy teacher approached me with the idea of dropping one of the fairs and replacing it with a local bookstore, none other than the storied Russell Books, I jumped at the opportunity.

Russell Books offers credit with their store in exchange for book fairs.  They can truly order anything and have an insane amount of back stock in their various warehouse locations around the city.  I began to think of them as my own private Amazon without the guilt and it felt good to be connecting within our community.

During the pandemic, Scholastic was able to rustle (pun intended and achieved!) up a virtual book fair, but Russell Books was not.  They have too much random stock, as a used book seller, to have enough of a handle on their inventory to offer lists virtually. To their credit, they did eventually figure that out and were able to offer a virtual experience. The pandemic gave both companies the urgency they needed to become more accessible online and have thus become virtual tools for schools.

The brightest light in our virtual book fair journey was Munro’s Books.  Munro’s virtual infrastructure was already strong pre-pandemic. When it became known that Munro’s was offering hybrid fairs, I was beyond excited.  Munro’s had been my favourite book store since I was a kid (who had only visited Victoria a handful of times from Alberta).  Their inventory was beautifully displayed, as it always is, on their website (if you have never shopped online there, I recommend it very highly – do it now, especially their Teachers and Schools page) and that made it seamless for shoppers.

The hybrid option, as we were moving into more vaccinated times, was that you could physically shop at Munro’s (any excuse!) and attribute your purchase to the school in order to build credit.  I had devoted parents emailing in photos of their children standing outside Munro’s with their new books and journals.  The credit we accumulated lasted over two years and I was able to do frequent ordering and visiting for pick-ups from Munro’s.  Delightful!  This is effective in fostering a reading culture at the school because when the students and teachers are asking for new books (be it large or small orders) I am able to surprise them with how quickly I can acquire them.

In conducting these experiments with in-person, local and virtual book fairs the shelves in our library are showing less red and I take a lot of pride in that.  It is important to have nourishing, immersive content on the shelves so that I can “offer a safe place where they (students) can explore and discover who they are through books” (Miller & Bass, 2019, p. 20).  I prefer not being beholden to Scholastic even though, I will admit, their fairs are by far the favourite for the students: it’s the merch!  I had one student say to me that he was sorry that the Russell Books book fair was such a flop.  I just smiled.  The Russell’s fair raised just as much money as the Scholastic one did, but because of the lack of toys and posters it felt different to him.

As we move forward with the year and our lives, we are back to our regularly scheduled fairs with Scholastic in the fall and Russell Books in the spring, but I have also decided to keep the Munro’s hybrid fair.  I would have thought there would be no room for virtual fairs because of the demand for in-person book-buying experiences.  However, the relationships I have developed with the people at that store, the ease of the shopping experience for otherwise vulnerable people online, the 20% discount for educators and their ordering power is too good to give up.  Book fairs are evolving and we need local and virtual experiences to continue to offer them to our school communities to bring the books to the kids.

Works Cited

Miller, S., & Bass, W. (2019).  Leading from the Library: Help your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age. (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. International Society for Technology in Education. 

All photos used are mine with permission.

Reflection

My research began, as all my research does, with a very broad and general scope.  I was searching for examples of using technology in the classroom, specifically the kindergarten classroom.  I thought that I was going to approach this inquiry with a mind towards practicality that would allow me to develop more of a technological approach to the young primary students that I interact with at my school.  There were literally hundreds of articles, so I began to chip away at them one by one and utilizing their generous reference lists to dive deeper into the worm hole.

As I plotted along, I realized, initially, that many of the research projects I found were being conducted in China, Japan and Taiwan.  I suppose I should have expected this as I, perhaps incorrectly, associate Asia as being ahead of us technologically speaking.  One of the studies mentioned augmented and virtual reality in teaching art lessons.  At first, I glossed over it thinking that I understood what VR was but the more I thought about it, I realized I could not picture what AR meant.  At this point in the process, I started to narrow my scope and zero in on what has been a fascinating exploration.

Augmented Reality technology is SO COOL!  How have I never heard of this before?  As a very dominant visual learner, I was totally absorbed in the videos I found on You Tube that demonstrated the use of AR in teaching anatomy.  I feel like if this technology had been available to me, I could actually have studied more science and kinesiology, which interested me but I believed that my brain could not retain what I thought was predominantly dry information.  How enriching to be able to peel off virtual layers of a human brain, or to crack open a rendering of a human skull?  The 3D abilities that I was learning about left me slack-jawed.

Next, I turned to Tedtalks.com as I wanted to see more examples of AR being used in classrooms of every level.  What I found there deepened my understanding about the implications of high level digital and technological advances and humanity.

Glenn Cantave talks here about how his non-profit in New York City is utilizing AR statues as art installations to further awareness and actual visibility of marginalized heroes instead of solely focusing his energies and efforts towards advocating for the removal of statues that glorify slave owners.

I continued on this thread and was treated to some refreshing truth and food for thought from Douglas Rushkoff. He is a media theorist and by the time I was listening to him speak, I knew that I had meandered quite far away from my initial staring point of looking at Jamboard and Smartboard usage in kindergarten classroom.  His ethical observations were very grounding in that they brought me back to consider my own broader feelings about technology in the classroom and the questions that he brings up in me will be fuel for the inquiry work yet to come.

Rushkoff had some very insightful views in what I would call a plea to humanity in an increasingly digital world.  He astutely points out that it is a great thing that we are at a place where we can teach kids to code at school because it will help them get jobs in the future, but that should not be the intention of education.  He points out that schools were initially created so that coal miners could learn to read and that it was about dignity and intelligence (Rushkoff, 2019).  If the purpose of schools is the train future workers, says Rushkoff, then “we’re just letting corporations really externalize the cost of training their workers” (Rushkoff, 2019, 5:09).

I am thankful for the design of these assignments to set me up and prepare me for the inquiry process.  I kind of feel like I have been Miagi’ed (Karate Kid) into diving into the thought channels that will bring the inquiry into more of a clear focus; I like it.  I am still interested in tools for use in the classroom, but I was approaching this in much too simplistic a way.  There are ethical implications that deserve consideration as well, and I look forward to grappling with these concepts as I move further along in the process.

Bibliography

Articles

Carol Aubrey & Sarah Dahl (2014) The confidence and competence in information and communication technologies of practitioners, parents and young children in the Early Years Foundation Stage, Early Years, 34:1, 94-108, doi: 10.1080/09575146.2013.792789

Hyunji Kwon, Kenneth Morrill. (2022) Virtual Reality: Immersive and Situated Art Education With 360-Degree Cameras, and Augmented and Virtual Reality Technology. Art Education 75:4, pages 27-32.

Miller, T. (2018). Developing numeracy skills using interactive technology in a play-based learning environment. International Journal of STEM Education, 5(1), 1-11. doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-018-0135-2

Schriever, V. (2021). Early childhood teachers’ perceptions and management of parental concerns about their child’s digital technology use in kindergarten. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 19(4), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X211030315

Selma Albayrak, Rabia Meryem Yilmaz. (2022) An Investigation of Pre-School Children’s Interactions with Augmented Reality Applications. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 38:2, pages 165-184.

Smeets, D., & Bus, A. (2015). The interactive animated e-book as a word learning device for kindergartners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(4), 899-920. doi:10.1017/S0142716413000556

Pao-Nan Chou, Chi-Cheng, C., & Mei-Yin, C. (2017). Let’s draw: Utilizing interactive white board to support kindergarten children’s visual art learning practice. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 20(4), 89-101. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/lets-draw-utilizing-interactive-white-board/docview/2147734816/se-2

Websites/Videos

A. (2021, January 4). Using google jamboard in the kindergarten classroom. YouTube. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Fg4gDb4iM

A. (2021, February 27). About. Creative Kindergarten. Retrieved October 1, 2022, from https://creativekindergartenblog.com/about-2/

Cantave, G. (n.d.). How augmented reality is Changing Activism. Glenn Cantave: How augmented reality is changing activism | TED Talk. Retrieved October 1, 2022, from https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_cantave_how_augmented_reality_is_changing_activism?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Aamir, R. (2020, November 30). Augmented reality in education. YouTube. Retrieved October 1, 2022, from https://youtu.be/fI6VlHg25v8

Rushkoff, D. (n.d.). How to be “Team human” in the Digital future. Douglas Rushkoff: How to be “Team Human” in the digital future | TED Talk. Retrieved October 1, 2022, from https://www.ted.com/talks/douglas_rushkoff_how_to_be_team_human_in_the_digital_future?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

I know this should seem obvious, but when I started to dive into the vast amount of information out there on digital learning in kindergarten, I started by reading.  This illustrates where I am starting from because I am first and foremost a lover of books.  When I think about resources in the classroom, my first thought goes to finding the best book for the job.  This assignment is holding up a mirror for me to see all of the space I have to grow.  So, after finding many articles, combing through them, taking notes, I finally realized that there must be much more video content online…I feel antiquated admitting it; nonetheless, the learning has begun.

VIDEO:

Creative Kindergarten YouTube channel

This video was very gentle and easy to approach for a beginner like myself.  She is a kindergarten teacher and so I found her explanations of Sphero’s and Google Jamboard really straight forward.  She also gave realistic examples of usage of these technologies in the classroom.  For example, I have never thought of using Sphero’s to paint!  Brilliant!  I am still figuring this platform out and could not successfully embed the video, but I will keep trying!

WEBSITE:

Augmented Reality in the Classroom

This link is to a website for a company called eLearning Industry and I found it a result of reading an article from the UBC reserve materials about a study that was conducted in Hong Kong using AR to teach art in early years education.  Virtual reality and Augmented reality seem quite controversial but I would love to see it in action to be able to imagine all of the possibilities.  One of the barriers that comes to mind is that it must be cost prohibitive for many schools and districts and also that the pandemic has made us leery of sharing anything among students that goes over the nose.  I am very curious about the possibilities this technology offers and how it will evolve both as a tool in life and in the classroom.

ARTICLE:

Let’s Draw

This article had many practical ways to help kindergarten students, not only improve drawing skills, but also ways to inspire the kids to stretch their imaginations of what is possible.  Fine motor skills are elemental in kindergarten, and it is incredibly inspiring to imagine the self-expression we could see from kids with more tools at their disposal.  Not to mention, the sheer size of the Smart board becomes an immense canvas for the children to create and collaborate with one another.

To dive into this post, I began by collecting notes from my fellow cohort and making a list of terms that I didn’t recognize.  This is helping me to figure out where I am starting out from and that hopefully will lead me to the first steps of my path on this course, to paraphrase Miller and Bass (p. 94, 2019).

So far some terms I am looking forward to exploring over the next week are:

Padlet, Stop Motion, Book Creator, Libby, Reggio Emilia, Microsoft Lens, Ctrl-F “Find the Facts” and Web 2.0 and 3.0.

I have so much exploring to do and the more I think about it and try to narrow my focus the more I keep thinking about the Kindergarten students that I teach.  Mostly, I see them for library time and in the gym for P.E. but when I fist took on this role, I used to do French lessons with them as well.  We removed the French in order to free up more time for me to be reading with them and playing in the gym.  My admin came to prioritize this time over the French because they would start those lessons in grade one anyways.  However, now I am starting to wonder if it would be beneficial to start introducing technology into their library time.  I am curious about what is out there and to essentially find out what it is that I don’t know.

As I let my imagination wander and wonder about how to integrate basic and fun technology into my time with the Ks, I am beginning to see how I can take more initiative to be a learning leader within my school guided by the B.C. curriculum.  So far by looking at the Applied Skills and Applied Technologies sections provide a starting point, but more research is needed for me to find apps and source out the best tablets to introduce to the littles.

Works Cited:

Building student success – B.C. curriculum. (n.d.). Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/adst/k/core

Miller, S., & Bass, W. (2019).  Leading from the Library: Help your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age. (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.) International Society for Technology in Education.