Action plan template

Collection development

Choose ONE priority area to focus on for your own school library collection. You might like to choose from the list of priority areas we identified (below), or use your own.

Collection development — priority area ideas
Supporting priority learners	Develop the collection to better support priority learners in your school For example: high-interest/low reading-age materials;
Improving cultural diversity	Develop the collection to better reflect the cultures of your school community e.g. Māori, Pasifika, or ESOL learners.
Supporting a particular subject or curriculum area	Develop the collection so that materials are available to inspire and inform inquiry learning and/or research, for topics currently being explored by learners in your school.
Supporting reading for pleasure for a particular group of readers	Develop the collection to better respond to the interests and needs of groups of readers. For example: boys who are not keen readers; students identified as Gifted & Talented.
Revitalising a section of your collection	Develop a section of your collection where materials are underused / unattractive / no longer current etc. For example: biographies; graphic novels; early fiction, reference materials, eBooks.

Think about whether any information, ideas and resources suggested in the Riverside School group discussion are relevant to your selected priority area, and how they could be applied to your own school library collection. Then suggest any other ideas and relevant resources you’ve learned about over the previous weeks (and possibly recorded in your Learning Journal) that could be explored further for your own school using the action-plan template.

Draft your ideas in the template. We don't expect this to be a complete action plan – just your initial thinking on how you could begin to take action. These ideas can be further developed once the course has finished.

You will share this draft action plan with the course participants in Week 5, look at other participants' actions plans, and exchange feedback with each other in Week 5.

My priority area is:

Supporting Priority Learners: Developing a collection to support children who are reading in the Green to Gold band ( Ready to Read Level 12 to Level 21)

Project / initiative title: “Super Readables and Readables Collection”

1. Stakeholders

Who will benefit: Readers at green/gold level, teachers who have children at this level, other students who can also borrow from this collection

Who will implement: Cathy and Madeleine with help and advice from other librarians at the public library

Who will sponsor: Library Budget

2. Goals – S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound)

Identify and remove old books, with student input, seek out new titles
Purchase new titles, get them labelled and shelved and ready to go by Term 4

3. Team

Leader: School Librarian

Support: Library assistant and senior teachers

4. Action steps

Identify and remove any books that fit this criteria but are in poor condition. Find the gaps.
Ask children what books interest them. Seek out great titles and purchase them.
Make the collection accessible by being: easy to find, and identified by having “Readable” and “Super Readable” stickers on them.
Rearrange library to accommodate collection, make a call if new shelving needed
Promote new collection to the children and staff

5. Resources

Available: Already have purchased some new books to add to this collection

Acquisitions: Have a budget of $1000 to set up

6. Schedule

Start: By the end of Week 5 - identify and remove from shelves 1. any books that are in poor condition in this category 2. any books that could join this collection

Complete:

Start: By the end of Week 6: Give the senior children on the Green/Gold level a survey to see what books they enjoy. Research books available at this level.
Complete:

Start:By the end of Week 7. Order the stickers and collate the results of the survey. Make a list of what books we are going to buy and where to buy them.
Complete:

Start: By the end of Week 8. Purchase books needed and bring them into the library system.
Complete:

Start:By the end of Week 9. Bring the collection together and divide in two - Green/Purple = Super Readable stickers and Turquoise/Gold = Readable stickers. May need to test some of these with the children at this level.
Complete:

Start: Make space and rearrange the library where necessary to house new collection, make it accessible.

Complete:

Start: Next Term Week 1. Promote new collection to children during their library time. Promote and explain new collection during Professional Learning ( Staff Meeting ) on Wednesday.
Complete:

Optional elements

7. Backgrounding

Teachers often ask for a good fit book for children in the green/gold level. These children often get out books that are far too difficult for them. I want teachers to be able to say to the child “get a book with a Super Reader or Reader sticker on it .“ Then the child and teacher can be sure that the book will be at a level that the child can read.

The books need to be age appropriate ,in different genres and subjects that any child would want to read.

8. Challenges and contingencies

Challenge: Finding books at this level that are age appropriate.
Solution/Contingency: Contact our reps who have mentioned series that fill this criteria

Challenge: Time!!! To put the action plan into place
Solution/Contingency: Madeleine and I cover each other to implement this plan.

Challenge:
Solution/Contingency:

9. Communications

Internal: Talking to students and senior teachers about the new collection.
Talk to Sue about finance.

External: See if Books For Kids can offer a discount, order online if cheaper. Advertise our new collection on our library blog

Diversity and Inclusion in Our Library

We agree about the questionnaire being a bit daunting. We have over 21 nationalities at our school so it’s very difficult to cater for all the children’s individual needs as much as we would like.

We try to read a lot of books to the children that encourage inclusiveness. Our latest book is ‘We’re all Wonders’ by R.J Palacio.

A good website to explore celebrating empathy through books is http://www.empathylab.uk/

Every year we celebrate some of our main cultures in the library with books and related activities. These include Maori Language Week/Waitangi Day, Matariki, Diwali, Sign Language Week, Samoan and Tongan Samoan Language Weeks (We find the series ‘Children of the Pacific’ is a great go to series’).

We have a good range of Maori Myths and Legends. We don’t always accession these as 398. We find categorising under the Author’s Name and adding them to the general picture books makes them more accessible for children and more widely read.

We currently have a good range of books to support our Reading Programme for Dyslexic children which is run in the library.

At the beginning of each year the school’s inquiry topic is Turangawaewae. This year we borrowed books from the National Library to support this topic. This allowed us to see what was available. We have now purchased some of the titles that were popular with teachers and students.

We have a number of books about refugees as this is quite a large group at our school. We recently purchased ‘Stepping Stones’ by Margriet Ruurs. This is written in Arabic and English and we’d love to find more books like this. Another recent purchase that highlights the Refugee experience is “My Two Blankets’ by Irena Kobald.

Two sensitive issues for us in our school are religion and war/violence due to the high number of muslim and refugee children. So we have to be careful about these themes.

cathinthelibrary

Labels

Monday, September 25, 2017

Access it Course

Kindness Books

Want to buy

Friday, September 1, 2017

Action Plan for bringing in a 'Super' and 'super readable 'collection