Happy Right to Read Week!

February 25 - March 1, 2013 is Right to Read Week


Right to Read Week is sponsored by the Ohio Council of the International Reading Association and is a celebration of reading. Benefits of reading:

• brings people together
• reduces stress & provides tranquility
• improves analytical thinking - makes you smarter!
• Increases vocabulary
• improves memory & writing skills
• expands your horizons

In an effort to recognize Right to Read Week, 43 OHS staff members participated (teachers, aides, counselors and library staff) by taking a picture of their shoes/feet with a favorite or most memorable book. "Guess who walked into a good book?"


March 1 is Read Across America Day

Best of 2012?

On Monday January 28, at 11 AM, the 2013 ALA Youth Media Awards will be announced. More than 1,300 onsite audience members and an unlimited number of virtual participants will join a webcast to hear the news first hand of who will win top honors among children’s and young adult authors and illustrators, as well as producers of children’s audio and video materials.  You can follow along in real-time by logging on to the ALA Youth Media Awards Facebook page, or via Twitter by following hashtag #ALAyma. For more information visit the ALA Youth Media Awards page. Among the 19 awards presented at Youth Media Awards program are the prestigious Caldecott Medal (75^th anniversary), which honors the illustrator of the year's most distinguished American picture book for children; Coretta Scott King Book Award for African American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults that communicate the African American experience; John Newbery Medal, honoring the author of the year's most outstanding contribution to children's literature; Michael L. Printz Award for the best book written for young adults.  Pura Belpré Award, honoring Latino writers and illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for youth; and Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, for both the author(s) and illustrator(s) of an outstanding book for beginning readers. 

In addition to the ALA Youth Media Awards, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) has also announced winners for Excellence in Nonfiction.

What were your favorite reads of 2012? I'd love to hear from you :-)

Some of my favorites included:

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• The Strength in What Remains
• The Paris Wife
• The Fault in Our Stars, 
• Ready Player One
• Room

Poetry Out Loud competition

Orange High School will participate for the first time in the national Poetry Out Loud poetry recitation contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation, administered statewide by the Ohio Arts Council. We will have a local competition (similar to our Slam contest) and a student will be selected to represent OHS at the Ohio competition on Saturday, March 16, 2013. The Ohio winner will advance to the national competition in April 2013. Finalists for the national championship will compete for scholarship prizes totaling $50,000, with the national champion claiming $20,000 in scholarship funding. For Poetry Out Loud contest details, please see me! We will have an informational meeting after the Thanksgiving holiday.

13 popular and affordable eBooks

Mashable shares 13 popular ebooks that cost under $3. “Cheap” and “good” are sometimes incompatible terms — especially when it comes to the bargain-priced e-book shops for NOOK and Kindle...Instead of sorting through the misplaced free and low-priced books on your own, we’ve compiled some of the best low-cost options to download on your e-reader."

The best of 2012 lists are starting to appear

The HuffPost has posted their Best Books of 2012 at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/16/best-books-2012_n_1952748.html#slide=more255755 

I've read a few on the list and have ordered many more for the library. Which books from the list did you read/like???

Author Dan Chaon

On Monday, October 29, 2012 author Dan Chaon had an amazing visit with OHS students and staff thanks to Vikas Turakhia, English teacher, who also invited teachers, students and the librarian from Copley-Fairlawn High School to participate.

Mr. Chaon read from one of his new books (I loved Await Your Reply) and then had a great Q&A with our students and teachers.

October is Information Literacy Month

Governor John R. Kasich has proclaimed October as Information Literacy Month in Ohio. Governor Kasich’s proclamation “seeks to remind all citizens of the importance of the role of all libraries and librarians - academic, public, school, and special - in teaching information literacy, which fosters educational opportunities, economic prosperity, social cohesion, democracy, and quality of life.”
According to the National Forum on Information Literacy, leaders have stated that no other change in American society has offered greater challenges than the emergence of the Information Age society. Being information literate means knowing how to find, evaluate, and use information to succeed in school, work, and society. According to the U.S. Department of Labor SCANS Report, “80% of future jobs will require skill in effec- tively using information.” 

With the Common Core standards, today’s school librarians build not only students' skills in writing, reading, research, and analysis, but also teachers' skills in teaching them. The standards include power verbs such as "analyze," "integrate," and "formulate," that press students toward more rigor and inquiry-based learn- ing. The common core, with its emphasis on explanation, complex text, and cross-disciplinary synthesis, is an opportunity for teachers to collaborate with librarians as co- instructors. Remember, school librarians have been trained as both teachers and librarians. 

Happy Teen Read Week

October 14-20 is Teen Read Week. The theme is "It Came From the Library!" 

Teen Read Week is a time to celebrate reading for fun, to take advantage of reading in all its forms, and to become regular library users. It’s the national adolescent literacy initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association. Teens are encouraged to celebrate Teen Read Week at home, as well as at their school and/or public library. Here are some suggestions for Teen Read Week:

• Visit your library and check out books.
• Set aside time each night to read 
• Share your favorite book - post a book review on the OHS Library Catalog
• Go online to learn about new books or authors.
• Join a book discussion group. 

Vote now for the Teen Buckeye Book Award

Voting is open for the 2012 Buckeye Children’s and Teen Book Awards! The Buckeye Children's Book Award and Teen Buckeye Book Award support youth reading and teacher and librarian involvement, and provide young people the opportunity to share their joy of reading by voting for their favorite books. 

Children and teens in grades K-12 can vote for their favorite books from September 1 through November 10. Vote at http://www.bcbookaward.info/vote-nominate/http://www.bcbookaward.info/vote-nominate/.  Classes, organizations, or entire schools may vote together. More information about the Buckeye Children’s and Teen Book Award... 

ACT & college readiness

A recent article in Education Week I came across  titled "Most Students Still Not College-Ready, ACT Report Find" highlights the following:

• 60% of the class of 2012 test takers failed to meet the benchmarks in 2 out of 4 tested subjects
• ACT’s “ college readiness benchmarks” are set to predict a student has a 75% chance of earning a C or higher or a 50% chance of earning a B or higher in a typical first year college course
  
• The output of educator’s focus on college and career readiness is not apparent yet
• An achievement gap was evident among race and ethnicity with the following scoring highest to lowest: Asians, Whites, Pacific Islanders, Hispanic, American Indian, and African Americans
• Students who take a more challenging caseload are more likely to graduate high school and do well on the college-entrance exam
• Some states now force all juniors to take the ACT, raising the question of how hard students try on the test

This article also pointed out that though slight improvements are visible in the areas of math and science, students are still not meeting benchmarks. One of the suggestions that seems common sense but may be overlooked by students, families, and even educators due to graduation requirements, etc. is the fact that having a more challenging caseload increases a student’s chance for success. “For instance, only 8 percent of students who took fewer than three years of math were considered "college ready," where 54 percent of students who took three years or more of math were college-ready” (Adams, 2012, p. 7). The full article is available through the EBSCO online database.