A Message from the Chair

If you’re reading this it means that you’ve reached the YSS blog – the place for up-to-date information for Wisconsin Youth Services librarians. The YSS board has been working hard to come up with the best ways to communicate with all members. This blog is just one of the ways. So set up an RSS feed so you can be up on the latest news from YSS.

The YSS web site is a great collection of resources for youth services staff. The new online tour of dynamic youth locations was just unveiled at WAPL and resides on the YSS page. The project, spear headed by Jill Lininger, the YSS web master and youth librarian at the Racine Public Library; and Barb Huntington, the Youth and Special Needs consultant with the Department of Public Instruction, allows us all to take a tour of dynamic spaces without leaving our computer. If you have a dynamic space, submit your photos to Jill. See the YSS web page for details on how to submit. Keep a look out for dynamic teen spaces, which will be coming this fall.

The kick off of the children’s spaces was just one of the excellent programs sponsored by YSS. We also sponsored sessions titled Playing to Learn, Learning to Play, My Space – Don’t Be Intimidated By It! Can It Work For Your Library?, and YSS co-sponsored a panel discussion titled Intellectual Freedom Matters in Theory and Practice for Children and Teens with the Intellectual Freedom Round Table. Thank you to everyone involved in making these sessions happen – I know it takes a lot of work to present at a conference, but sharing what you do best is the best way for us to all learn and grow. See individual write ups from participants on these sessions.

The YSS board met at WAPL and was busy planning the fall annual conference. The author for the much anticipated YSS author luncheon is Catherine Gilbert Murdock who wrote Dairy Queen and The Off Season. Both are set in Wisconsin and are about a teen living on a dairy farm learning to find her voice. Murdock’s latest book Princess Ben was just released – read it now and then attend the luncheon to meet the author in person.

But fall seems a long way away with summer reading just around the corner. If your life has been like mine lately, you’ve been immersed in plans for summer reading for about a solid four months now. I know many librarians who come to dread summer reading. Trust me, there are days when I can relate to that feeling. But over all, summer reading to me is the synthesis of why we are children’s librarians because the main goal of summer reading is to get kids excited about wanting to read. Through summer reading we are developing and creating readers – and that couldn’t be more fun. When I see children excited about a story or a character and can’t wait to get their hands on the next book in a series, that’s what makes all those months of planning worth it.

Summer reading programs make a big difference in the reading success of a child and research proves it. Children who read over the summer can maintain or even increase their reading level. Reading for pleasure is the best way for children to practice and improve their reading skills. Children who find something they want to read tend to be the best readers and have more enjoyable reading experiences overall. For further research on why reading over the summer is crucial go to:

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/summer/research.htm

We’d love to hear your summer stories - what worked, what didn’t, what funny things happened while you were hosting a program, etc. Submit them to yssadmin@gmail.com and we'll make sure to post them to the blog.

Finally, make sure you get in a little of your own summer reading and enjoy spreading your love of reading to all the children in your city.

Summer Reading Program Public Service Announcements

Check out the 2008 Summer Reading Program Service Announcement at http://www.cslpreads.org/psa.htm. Other Summer Reading materials can be found at http://www.cslpreads.org.

WAPL 2008: Playing to Learn, Learning to Play

Mary Discoll, the Outreach Librarian for the Dane County Library Service headquartered in Madison, presented a hands on session on play literacy. Mary uses a vehicle called the "Readmobile," jointly operated by Dane County Library Service and Madison Public Library, to visit Head Start and day care centers that serve children whose families have low incomes.

Mary brought samples of the toys used for each of the play literacy units. She explained that each session lasts about 45 minutes to an hour. She opens each session the same way with a naming song. She then introduces theme for the day by reading at a book. The next activity is to work on the literacy activity. That might involve making a list of items needed for a camping trip or flavors of ice cream, or ingredients for a pizza. While Mary may ask the children to guess at the initial letter a word starts with, she often just scribbles the rest of the word. The children Mary works with are pre-literate for the most part. Her goal is just to make them comfortable with using a pencil or crayon to make marks on a piece of paper to get the sense that writing is important. It is not important for the purpose of the activities that the children actually form letters or words.

After the literacy activity is introduced she has an adult help her model the type of play that the children will be doing. For example if the theme is Pizza Parlor, one adult takes the role of the restaurant worker and the other is the customer. The worker points out the list of ingredients and takes an order pad to write down what the customer wants. Since this is a play activity it doesn't matter what is actually written.

Then the worker uses a cardboard circle as the pizza pan. Add three round circles of felt, one in tan for the crust, red for the sauce, and yellow for the cheese. Mary demonstrated kneeding the felt crust and tossing it into the air and catching it. The worker then reaches into a bag of ingredients and finishes the pizza. The ingredients are various felt shapes (triangles, circles, squares) rather than pieces that look like mushrooms, peppers, or sausage. The worker demonstrates that the toppings need to be spread out on the pizza. Once it is ready, the pizza is put in a toy oven, and handed to the customer when it is "cooked."

Once the adults have acted out the roles of customer and pizza parlor worker, pairs of children are allowed to act out the roles themselves. Mary brings enough props for 20 children to play at a time. Typically there are about 17 children in the classes she visits. She visits the same centers once a month. The children are allowed to play with the props for about 15 minutes. Adults guide the children and remind them to "read" the list of ingredients and "write" down the orders.

The last portion of the session involves the children selecting books they want to check out. All books are check out on the day care center's card, but the children select the book they want to be able to keep for the month in their classroom. Some of the books may relate to the theme for the day or the teacher may request that the books address another theme the center will be using that month.

Elements of play literacy can be infused into almost any story time program. If libraries are doing day care outreach, adding elements of play literacy would certainly enhance their efforts. Mary suggested the book "Literacy Through Play" by Gretchen Owocki as a resource to get librarians started on their own play literacy efforts.

-Submitted by Barb Huntington

"Catch the Reading Bug"

From Rose Frost, the children’s consultant for Utah:

Some of you might remember that last year the Vermont Center of the Book and the National Science Foundation created a manual with math and science activities for "Get A Clue...". They produced another manual this year that aligns with the Catch the Reading Bug theme. Here is the link:

http://www.mothergooseprograms.org/articles/2651.pdf

This manual is 30+ pages and contains a lot of color pictures, web sites, and activities so it might take awhile to download--- but it is worth it!