ŌTOROHANGA librarians Gaylene Cumpstone, Heather Taylor and Fiona Cowan. Absent is Molly mcGrath. Photo Paul Charma
Improving children’s literacy tops the list of things Ōtorohanga people want from their library.
“Our library’s annual survey asked people who use the library to grade, in order of importance, what they would most like to see us concentrate upon,” said library manager Heather Taylor.
“There’s no doubt we presented some popular options, including extending online services, bringing more library services to rural areas, strengthening partnerships with other library networks and community groups, and developing more learning opportunities for members of the community.
“But it was significant to us that while respondents supported these things, the option, “Every Child a Reader”, emerged as their number one priority.”
Many of the parents and grandparents who took part were concerned at the perceived lack of literacy progress they’d seen among their children or grandchildren.
“They seem to be wondering how youngsters will get on in life and make a contribution to society, unless they gain good literacy skills.”
A report surfaced in March, showing that at the age of 15, two out of five New Zealand children were either only just meeting, or failing to meet, required literacy standards.
To get a grasp of the issues the King Country News interviewed Heather and her fellow librarians Fiona Cowan and Gaylene Cumpstone (their colleague Molly McGrath was absent the day we called).
Heather said fostering a love of books and reading among children and young people was right at the core of a much larger mission the library had to encourage learning in the community.
To this end, the library worked hard to create a vibrant environment and place everyone would look forward to visiting.
Among its resources it had a range of early readers that supported phonics, the effective method of training children to decode words using the sounds the letters in a word make.
Having seen various teaching methods over the years, the Ōtorohanga librarians said they were relieved the New Zealand education system had moved back to an emphasis on phonics.
Many children found this approach more useful that the so-called “whole language” method of teaching children to read, which to some extent relied upon guessing what the word was after looking at a picture in the book concerned.
One of Fiona’s jobs is to plan and have an overview of programming, particularly programmes for children.
For example, she has planned a programme for the school holidays, which start on September 25. This year the library is using a Harry Potter series for its inspiration, “one featuring a lot of magic and muggles”. Fiona is also planning a summer reading programme.
An effective tool to encourage child literacy is an app called Beanstack. This is designed to inspire participants to read and keep reading. It keeps track of reading time, enabling participants and also the librarians to monitor reading progress. The app enables participants to buddy up with other readers. And to encourage readers as they progress, it awards badges for time spent reading.
Beanstack sets challenges useful for encouraging literacy, including one called “One Thousand Books Before School”.
“It is such a boon to the individual to become a reader at a young age,” Heather said.
“Right from the start, we encourage parents to read to children as this has proven results in literacy understanding.”
One thing the librarians loved was introducing children and young people to books they particularly enjoyed. Favourite books can make a huge difference in a child’s personal literacy journey.
“You always have victories. Sometimes when working with children they will ask for a book saying, ‘oh, I don’t know what to read miss’, and you find them a book that switches on their love of reading. That’s the Harry Potter factor.
“You know that once you’ve hooked them, they will be readers for life. And that’s what keeps you going,” Heather said.
“We’d like to work more closely with the schools. Maybe look at getting the schools to bring their kids back in here as a group.
“If we can’t get mum and dad, then we can encourage them to come in with their classroom group and look around. Then they can go back to mum and dad and say, ‘I went to the library today and it was really good’.
“Some time ago, a school came in as a group activity and there are still children who come in independently from that group, sometimes with their parents.”
