Mitali Perkins in La Crosse April 8

Miltali Perkins, noted children's author and powerful speaker on diversity and the experience of youth living between cultures will be coming to UW-La Crosse to present a free lecture on Books Between Cultures on Tuesday April 8, 12:30 -2:00pm and and 4-5:30 pm at Murphy Library on the second floor.

It's worth the trip to hear her speak (and maybe pop over to La Crosse Public Library and say hi)!

GWR Symposium Notes

The Growing Wisconsin Readers Symposium was held on March 21.  State and national experts explored the topic of engagement by discussing how books, screens, and physical spaces encourage literacy development in relationships between young children and their caregivers. Panel presentations and a display gallery highlighted early literacy innovations from public libraries around the state. 

Featured speakers included Chip Donahue, Dipesh Navsaria and Rebecca Katzenmeyer. 

I blogged about each session and shared my notes on our system blog, Little Nic Bits.  
Feel free to view them.  

Chip Donohue
Dipesh Navsaria
Rebecca Katzenmeyer

Early Literacy Calendar

It's been fun recruiting YSS members to develop a month of content for the 2015 calendar. One volunteer shared with us how she is using this year's calendar :

I love this year's calendar.  Each month I print out copies (in color) for each day care family, preschool family, kindergarten family, and HeadStart family in our community.  Plus we make them available at all programs at the library.  We use the back of the calendar to print out things that are happening at the library during that month with dates and times.  It's marvelous!

How are YOU using the calendar in your town?  Let us know in the comments!

Betsy Bromley & Marge Loch-Wouters, YSS calendar coordinators

Storytimes for Spring

Even though some snow fell last evening, Spring is in the air.
Right?

Even if it's not, it's time to start thinking of storytimes that are Spring-related. Abby the Librarian
just posted some great ideas for Preschool storytimes that have a spring-like feel.

Check them out! 

NPR: Libraries and Teens

An article ran on NPR this week that talked about how while overall library use is down, it has increased when it comes to teens.

YALSA President Shannon Peterson says about Teen Tech Week, ""The range of programs is amazing,... from creating and programming mini computers ... to learning how to produce, record and market your own music with local musicians." Some libraries mashed up print and digital by helping young people film book trailers and create"Read Boxes" — like the Red Box movie kiosks — with QR codes for others to view and rate the trailers."

The article can be viewed here. 

PLA Recap: Autism and Teen Services

Yesterday, Jean Anderson and I hosted a "PLA Recap" webinar with several guest panelists.  We talked about our favorite sessions that we attended at the PLA Conference last week in Indianapolis.

There were two presentations that might be of interest to children and teen librarians.

Jennifer Thiele at Marinette talked about a session on storytime with kids on the autism spectrum.  Lara Lakari, also at Marinette, talked about teen and tween services. 

The South Central Library System blog has the hand outs and recording of the webinar. 

The whole recap is worth a listen, but if you specifically want to listen to Jennifer, skip ahead to 9:20. If you want to listen to Lara's session, skip ahead to 37:55.  Each session lasts around 9 minutes. 

GWR Symposium Notes to be Posted

Hopefully many of you will be attending the Growing Wisconsin Readers symposium this Friday in Stevens Point. 

State and national experts will explore the topic of engagement by discussing how books, screens, and physical spaces encourage literacy development in relationships between young children and their caregivers. Panel presentations and a display gallery will highlight early literacy innovations from public libraries around the state. 

Featured speakers include:
• Chip Donohue, PhD 
• Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD
• Rebecca Katzenmeyer, Montessori Directress

I will attend and will take notes. Once they are edited, I will post them here. 

YSS Member? We Want You!

Hey friends who are members of the Youth Services Section of the Wisconsin Library Association!  We may be looking for you.

• Do you love working with preschoolers?
• Do you share early literacy tips with your families and parents?
• Are you willing to help contribute to our cool YSS project from the comfort of your own library?

Then get in touch with us!

We are about to start work on the 2015 YSS Early Literacy Calendar and we want you!

Each month of the calendar is filled with ideas and activities to bring alive the 5 ECRR (Every Child Ready to Read) practices  - PLAY, TALK, READ, SING, WRITE - plus math and science ideas for parents and their preschoolers. Suggestions for activities, ideas and books fill each unique month.

We have twelve YSS members each provide one month of content. It's fast, easy, fun and quick.

If you think you would like to part of this fun crowd-sourced project, please get in touch with project leaders Betsy Bromley at bbromley@cooney.lib.wi.us  or Marge Loch-Wouters, marge@lacrosselibrary before  March 28 to express interest. We'll be tapping folks immediately to meet a May 15 deadline!

Go YSS folks!!!!

WISEdash Webinar Tomorrow

Using WISEdash to Understand Young Patrons as Students

Customize your library’s programs and services for children, teens, and families by discovering what’s happening in the district, grade levels, and schools in your area. Explore data related to academic performance in reading and math as well as enrollment groups such as economic, disability, ELL, and migrant status.  Find out how to capture data for use on applications and reports that require identification of library demographics.

Youth services librarians and public library directors are encouraged to attend this informative and instructive webinar about WISEdash Public Portal.  WISEdash is a data portal that uses "dashboards," or visual collections of graphs and tables, to provide multi-year education data about Wisconsin schools.  As a public reporting tool, WISEdash is used by districts, schools, parents, researchers, media, and other community members to view data published by Department of Public Instruction. Webinar participants will participate in a guided exploration to gain an overview of WISEdash as well as examine search techniques.

Date: Thursday, March 13, 2014 12:00-1:00pm
Presenters: DPI Division of Libraries & Technology staff Melissa Straw, Manager, Data Warehouse and Decision Support Team; Melanie McCalmont, Business Analyst, Data Warehouse and Decision Support Team; and Tessa Michaelson Schmidt, Youth and Special Services Consultant, Public Library Development Team. 

For more information about WISEdash, visit http://wisedash.dpi.wi.gov/

The webinar will be recorded and posted online under “Professional Development” on the DPI Youth Services page:http://pld.dpi.wi.gov/pld_ys-sn#prof-dev

No registration is required; simply join the Blackboard Collaborate session.  Note--Internet Explorer is the preferred browser for this platform (Java required). 

Blackboard Collaborate session: http://tinyurl.com/pqn7svo

• Attendees who need telephone audio (versus VoIP) should use the conference number:
   1-877-820-7831 and enter participant passcode:  697156.
• Test your system beforehand 
• Blackboard Collaborate overview video
• Blackboard Collaborate online support or phone (877) 382-2293

Tessa Michaelson Schmidt

Public Library Youth and Special Services Consultant

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

Favorite Apps

Are you using apps with kids at storytimes or offering the usage of iPads in your children's area?  Librarybonanza recently polled patrons on the apps that are used the most. If this is something you are offering or thinking about offering, it might help get you started.

Check out the popular apps.

Read on WI - March Titles

Happy March! Looks like there's still time to stay warm inside and curl up with a book before spring arrives. You'll find some great reading in our titles below.

Read On Wisconsin would love for you to share how you use our book selections in your library or classroom. We have a Pinterest board just for this purpose! It's our Where in WI is Read On Wisconsin  board. If you're interested in posting to this board, send me an email. I can "invite" you to post on the board either through your email or your Pinterest name.

A great example of using ROW books at school is the Whitehorse Middle School Film Camp, where students improved reading, literacy, and technology skills while creating book trailers of Read On Wisconsin books. One of their book trailers is for this month's middle school title, Unwind by Neal Shusterman. You can also access the book trailer through Teaching Books. Sharing book trailers is great way for kids to engage other kids in reading.

February was a busy month here at Read On Wisconsin. We hosted a Twitter Chat with Elizabeth Wein, author of our February high school title, Code Name Verity, and Battle of Books high school teams. We had great participation from high schools around the state and fabulous help from the WEMTA Battle of the Books committee. (A special thanks to Sandra Wurdeman!) We also kicked off a book trailer project with Madison Public Library and Simpson Street Free Press for their teen book reviewers to create book trailers of some Read On Wisconsin titles. If you, your library or your school find these activities appealing or if you have an idea for another Read On Wisconsin book project, send me an email. Also, stay updated on projects, resources and activities throughout the month by following us on Twitter and Pinterest. 

As always, discussion questions for the books are available on our website and resources for the titles and authors can be found at Teaching Books, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Here are the titles for March:

Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. A Neal Porter Book / Roaring Brook Press, 2012

Animal Spots and Stripes by Britta Teckentrup. Handprint Books, 2012

Poems:

“Soggy Greens” by John Cunliffe, p. 19

“Recipe for Green” by Jane Yolen, pp. 54-55

from  Here's a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry edited by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters. Illustrated by Polly Dunbar. U.S. edition: Candlewick Press 2007.

Primary (Grades K-2)

               Penny and Her Song by Kevin Henkes. Greenwillow / HarperCollins, 2012

Intermediate (Grades 3-5)

               Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead. Wendy Lamb Books / Random House, 2012

The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis. Wendy Lamb Books / Random House, 2012

Middle School

              Unwind by Neal Shusterman . Simon and Schuster, 2007

High School

            The Final Four by Paul Volponi. Viking, 2012

Happy reading and hopefully spring will be here soon!   Read on!

Emily Townsendl Librarian
Cooperative Children's Book Center, Madison WI

PLA Conference Youth Track

If you are attending the PLA Conference next week, you can easily search for the youth programs using the "search" options on the website. You can also view the full program descriptions.

I would also encourage you to attend a "Converstation" if it looks interesting. These tend to be smaller, more intimate sessions where the speakers engage the group in conversations.  I attended two of these at the PLA Conference in 2012 and they were some of my favorite sessions.

I will be posting all of my session notes on our system blog, Nic Bits, but anything youth related I will add here.