Blokes with Books Club

This post is about a year overdue, but here goes.

Early into my new job as a newly minted Teacher Librarian I started noticing the "lost boys"  of the library.  Those souls who would wander around and between the stacks with a dazed look on their faces. Or they'd be flicking through books without actually registering the contents. Or they'd just park themselves on a chair with the (too popular to let them be borrowed) Guinness Books of records and sit and talk through with "oohs and aahs" with their like-minded mates.  Obviously something.needed.to.be.done.

But equally obvious to my middle aged, white, female mind, I was not the one to do it. Or at least, not to appear to be the one to do it. But should it be a teacher? If so, which teacher? My criteria was young and male, but I didn't know my new colleagues all that well... I settled on our EdTech coach, Tim.  An extremely busy and popular educator, with experience in the classroom and, since moving into the new role with all the classrooms, he was enthusiastic when I suggested it. (Phew).

We collaborated on lesson plan ideas, and books that may "hook" the students. And we were open for business. We emailed teachers from Grades 3-6 and asked if they had any students who they thought may benefit from this group. Most teachers had 1 or 2 students.  The first session started with about 8 students. And quickly word spread that this was a really fun thing to be involved with.  Group members had their own membership badges and a special "learning agreement" for their time in the library. Teachers reported back that the students were more motivated to borrow books and were super enthusiastic about going to the sessions which were held once a week on a Wednesday during the last period (a 40 minute period reserved for literacy leadership). A couple of ELL students were identified who would also benefit from being "one of the blokes" even though their language level wasn't that high and they joined in as well.

The year ended with a bang when I chanced on reading of a book review of "Adventures of a Kid Magician" in February or March. Then of course it was a case of getting Tim's mother to buy 5 copies of the book from Walmart - the only stockist at the time and shipping it to Singapore. It was as if we'd set off fireworks in the library. Basically each chapter leads to clues which unlocks a code to a youtube video showing how to do a magical trick. So the rest of the year involved multiple read-alouds of the chapters and hunting the clues down and desperate attempts by our blokes to be the next in line to read the book! Talk about a magic formula to combine the physical and digital (my review here),

Today was our first official day, starting with going over the essential agreements, one boy who insisted on doing a book talk on a book he was loving (Things Explainer - I've ordered a copy for the library now ) an ice-breaker of Zip Zap Zop followed by "Book Speed Dating" - 3 rounds of 5 minutes of "dating" a book after which the favourite was chosen (or not) for checkout.

Initial Lesson plans (2015/6):

Lesson #	Ice Breaker	Activities
1	Staring Contest	-Choose a Book Any Funny Book/read -Read in the Dark/ Tent -Find a girly book competition/read   -Find a manly book competition/ read
2	Spot The Difference	-Ben Cooperman Read Aloud his book “Gabriel and Five Joshuas”
3	Charades (written on note cards)	-Discuss adventures/ what kind of adventures there are -Read choose your own adventure book
4	Crocodile Tooth Game	Graphic Novels
5	Zip Zap Zop	-Judge A Book By It’s Cover
6	Toilet Paper Mummy	-Monster Books
7	Drawing Charades	-Joke Books
8	Draw Yourself As Cartoon	-Dewey Grams -write down the number of book and to hand to someone else -Use scholastic.com to make a Christmas book wishlist
9	Minefield	-Introduce Legends and Myths with Sinbad Video -Legends and Myths books
10	Zip Zap Zop	-Introduce old comics -Read through old comics
11	Tennis Table Soccer	-Magazine Reading Explain all the neat features of the different magazines
12-end of year	Various icebreakers	Reading of "Adventures of a kid magician" and unlocking the videos

This book must die!

Our library has just received a big shipment of books and I need to make some space so that the new books don’t get lost.  On Friday I therefore did a little exercise with my Grade 6 students that I called “this book must die”.

Since many of them had either read “The Hunger Games” or “American Sniper” or seen the movie, we discussed it in terms of “what are the survival skills needed” by a book to ensure it’s continued existence on the shelves and “which books are a library / librarian / students’ friends and which are enemies“.  The students came up with some great ideas, and showed real insight into the dilemmas and choices facing a librarian.  It was also wonderful to see how much more “literarily” mature they had become, with groups of students arguing that books such as the “Rainbow Fairies” and “Horrid Henry” series shouldn’t be in our collection, that they were formulaic with no qualities, and with other students equally passionately defending them – including some boys arguing that their younger sisters loved Rainbow Fairies and had the right to read them until they knew better!  I wish I’d video’d them to show to parents who enter long convoluted arguments with me about introducing more “classics” (i.e. the books of their book deprived youth) at a younger age to my students.  They proved the case of “free voluntary choice” of books for students and that if you trust your students they’ll rise to the occasion.

Although I asked them to focus on fiction, a couple brought some very outdated nonfiction books to my attention (think moustachioed librarians straight out of the 80’s), and one even brought a more recent book on scuba diving where all the information wasn’t current anymore to my attention.

I also let them had a go at the “hallowed hall” of literature circle kits – they did ask.  And there definitely were a very strongly felt sentiments about text that they were expected to read either as a class or in small groups.  Luckily the “class texts” passed muster (I suspect because the teachers have actually read them – either with the students or independently or even as a read-aloud), but the smaller sets of 4-6 books had three books that will need to be eliminated.  The “deal” I made with them is that if even one student came to the passionate defence of a book, it would stay.  We had a long discussion about whether or not “award winning” books had any kind of immunity from weeding – again I loved their perceptive comments about the fact that most of the awards originated in America and this didn’t necessarily reflect their world view, interests or priorities.

Besides arbitrary titles that weren’t particularly important, the following ‘text set’ books, some of which are award winning by “important” authors were condemned:

Stowaway – Karen Hesse.  60 students unanimously said they’d struggled through it hating every minute and that it had no redeeming features whatsoever in their eyes.

Criss Cross – Lynne Rae Perkins – they found it boring, found no connection to their lives

The Heaven Shop – Deborah Ellis – I promise I didn’t say a word about this. But their sentiments echoed my privately held sentiments exactly.  It was superficial, it was written by an outsider, it had too many coincidences so they felt they could no longer suspend belief.

After 3 exhausting but exhilarating classes the exercise was completed.  Then yesterday my Grade 5 classes came for library class and their first question was ‘Ms. please can we also do “this book must die’?” – don’t you love it when a library lesson echoes in the school hallways?