Book Nook: Kingston project helps improve reading skills
By KATE SCHOTT kschott@daily-chronicle.com
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| Kingston Elementary School teacher Lois Schwanke checks out a new book from the new Book Nook area within the schools reading room on Oct. 8. (Rob Winner – rwinner@daily-chronicle.com) |
The well-stocked reading room at Kingston Elementary has been a project four years in the making.
It started slowly then, said reading specialist Karen Baker, who staffs the Book Nook. During the past two years, the district has provided the support needed to stock it with 1,500 sets of books students would find engaging, Baker said.
That includes non-fiction titles about creatures such as bats and spiders that boys find an interest in, she said, and which were especially popular leading up to Halloween. Many titles are science or social studies-based to help build knowledge in those areas as well, she added. Titles range from a biography of Dr. Seuss to the Boxcar Children series to “Sleeping Beauty.”
While the books are aimed at what students are interested in, teachers are the ones who enter the Book Nook to check out titles. The Book Nook takes up a portion of the back of Baker’s classroom, and is made up of metal shelves overflowing with books.
“They love it,” Baker said of her fellow teacher’s reactions to the new and improved Book Nook, which debuted this fall.
Her role as reading specialist is to find strategies to help all students learn to read better, as well as assist teachers in implementing those ideas. The Book Nook is one way to do that, Baker said.
About a half-dozen of a given book have been placed into a large plastic bag, and teachers check them out for differentiated reading, Baker said. They are placed in bags so teachers can grab just one packet for use by several children.
Differentiated reading is where one child or small group of children read a book they can comprehend, she said, which may mean above or below grade level. The idea is to meet kids at their level and help them grow as readers.
A grant from Walmart provided enough funding to buy plastic bags to hold the book groupings and plastic baskets to hold the packets, as well as cards for a check-out system. The district pitched in to buy several metal bookshelves to hold all of the books, Baker added.
The school has always had – and still does have – a room where there were books that a teacher could use, Baker said, but those were sets for the entire class to read. The point of the Book Nook is to provide differentiated reading opportunities to students.
“We want to meet their needs,” she said.
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