Partnership promotes independent learning
During its Extended School Year and summer school programs, Ramona Elementary School teamed up with Ramona Community Library to teach students how to take advantage of the public resources available in the library.
Just fewer than 300 children are enrolled in the summer programs, with students in kindergarten through sixth grade. They are split into three sections and given half-hour sessions at the library.
Students in kindergarten through third grade were introduced to the library collection, occasionally read stories and taught how to check out books.
Cynthia Palacious, Youth Services librarian for Ramona Library, said she wanted students in that age group to leave “knowing where are our picture books versus for beginning readers versus where are the chapter books.”
“What I find with some kids that are a little more reluctant (to read) is that they’re either intimidated by reading because they see, like, the huge textbook, but when you realize, ‘Oh, half of it is pictures,’ then it’s not as intimidating,” she said.
Palacious also designed the program to help students find an interest in reading. She asked the students what types of movies, people or subjects they enjoy and worked to find them a book in the same genre.
“As I tell a lot of parents, even now and when I was in education, you want children to read something that they love,” she said. “You don’t want it to become a chore.”
Students in the fourth through sixth grade were taught how to check out books as well, but were also shown how to place a book on hold, reserve a book from a sister library and use the research databases on the public computers.
“We’re also going to introduce them to the electronic resources, and that is a huge thing because nowadays common core is so big and a lot of kids are emerged in technology,” Palacious said. “A lot of people associate a library with only tangible books. They don’t always associate them with electronic resources, have it be audiobooks, have it be digital books or the eBooks or have it be electronic resources.”
One such resource is the Gale research database available on the public computers in the library. Gale gives students access to sources such as books, newspaper articles and magazines.
“What that does is that, one, it’s kind of like one place to go, two, it saves you a lot of time; it’s very time efficient,” said Palacious.
Gale also provides students with reliable resources that they can use for their projects, especially in high school and higher education.
“I found that kids aren’t always exposed to how to use their materials in terms of the library collection,” Palacious said. “So that’s one thing that we’re wanting to close that gap in terms of just having them be aware of what are the resources and how to utilize them.”
Ramona Elementary Principal Pixie Sulser said the partnership was possible thanks to federal Title 1 funding and was planned with multiple goals in mind.
The first goal was to show students how valuable a resource the library could be to them, specifically during the school year.
“This is the place where they can go and there’s a great technology center. There’s a place where they can get tutoring, they can check out books,” said Sulser.
The second goal was to promote reading. This meant getting the students their own library card and showing them how to use the library’s materials.
“Reading is the key to everything in education,” Sulser said. “So if we can get students to realize you may not have books at home or you may have read all your books at home, there’s a whole place here where you don’t have to pay for them, you just have to check them out and be sure you bring them back.”
“What I have seen are a lot of kids that have never checked out a book before and they’re excited they get to take this book home; they get to read,” said Sulser. “So seeing kids who are excited about that was really cool.”