This morning we invited Middle School parents into the renovated Red Scroll Library space to talk about the role of the library.
There are two important ways in which the library serves our community - the first is through fostering a joy for reading and literacy by providing a variety of texts in different formats and through physical and digital (eBook / audiobooks) media.
There have been wonderful changes in the world of publishing for children and young adults as a response to the need for more visual, high interest and browsable books that can compete for the attention of our students.
Parents were introduced to the options and asked to please allow students the freedom of choice and agency in what they read for pleasure.
Reading for pleasure has many benefits, including the development of empathy, a way to calm down and relax, improving vocabulary and knowledge and fostering creativity and imagination.
Students who read at least 20 minutes a day have nearly 3x the vocabulary of students reading only 12 minutes a day.
As an IB world school, we follow Inquiry based Learning. Through Inquiry students are able to be curious and investigate what interests them. The library helps with the Approaches to Learning (ATL's) of Research, including Information Literacy and Media Literacy.
One of our big projects in the last six months has been to curate the best, most age and pedagogically appropriate resources for research and learning into guides for our students through a website learn.wab.edu. We're gradually adding resources for each grade, subject and unit where students can find a place to start their research, or dive deeper into areas that interest them.
All members of our community can use these guides, although some of the resources (Databases, Newsela etc) are password protected for our student and teacher use.
We've also started a site for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ask.wab.edu where our community can find answers in our question bank or pose new questions.
These are a few ways in which our libraries work to spark joy and curiosity. Enjoy
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