SLMS Interview

At our middle school, the library has gone under recent renovations in preparations to make more resources available to our staff. I asked our school librarian about some of the new additions our library would be receiving. The two most interesting additions include a reading resource room organized by Fountas and Pinnell reading levels and ladder texts from National Geographic. We have spent the past school year targeting fluency of all readers who are below grade level with the Fountas and Pinnell Assessment Kits. After administering the fluency and comprehension tests, the students’ results are then given a letter label from A-Z. For example, an incoming 6^th grader who is on grade level in reading would be equivalent to a level U in Fountas and Pinnell. The reading resource room is a collection a book sets, each containing five copies of the same book which would be great to use for literature circles. Our librarian and her assistant have bagged all the book sets and labeled them with a corresponding Fountas and Pinnell level and Lexile level. These kits will be great to use for differentiated reading groups in a classroom.

                The reading resource room also contains a selection of picture books and trade books that can be used for read a-louds or as mentor texts. These books are shelved and organized by content area, making it easier for math, science, and social studies teachers to incorporate reading into their classrooms. This will be helpful for content specific teachers who may have been unsure of how to incorporate reading strategies into the classroom.

The Ladder series from National Geographic is going to be a great resource for address the Informational Text strand of the Common Core Standards. This series takes the same content, and writes four different levels of text. The texts are all bound the same way and include the same pictures and graphics, but the words selected are now adaptable to the individual reader. I think this will be a great resource for my special education students, now they can access the same text at their level without feeling singled out. The Ladder books can be used across multiple content areas, especially in the science classroom.

Aside from the resources we already have, I think these new additions will be a great asset to our teachers. I look forward to using them!