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A library’s space, and how it relates to children of all ages, is the theme of this year’s ALSC Charlemae Rollins President’s Program: Libraries: The Space to Be . If you are attending ALA Annual in Orlando, join President Andrew Medlar to learn more about space design during a panel discussion that will focus on best practices for small, medium and large libraries, and how libraries are creating spaces that are vital to children and the communities that support them. Speaking of space design – does your library have a space created specifically for the tween user?

Yes, tweens. Previously best known as “school age patrons”, the 9-12 year old set has graduated into their own sub-community of library users, with many libraries paying attention to this demographic by creating specialized spaces within their children’s departments that cater directly to the pre-teenage.  Today, libraries are defined as much by their spaces as they are by their communities.

So what makes tweens so unique?  For one thing, it is the age where many children are becoming aware of their own likes and dislikes, reading preferences, and identity. Tweens have opinions, and they voice them – through book selections, social media posts, and yes, their library usage or non-usage.  By creating a space that is unique to this narrow range of patrons, children’s librarians are sending an important message: Welcome. We want you here. Get comfortable. Stay for awhile and hang out.

Hard tables and straight backed chairs are being replaced with free-form tables on wheels, ones that can fit together like puzzle pieces, or be pulled apart to create separate spaces on those days when pre-teen patrons want their own personal space.  Wooden chairs are making way for softer counterparts, ones that beckon a child to sit and charge their phone while dangling their legs over the side. Tall bookshelves are being swapped out for lower, browsing units that mimic those seen in retail – with face out book covers and shelf talkers.

Gone too are the bulletin boards created solely by the library staff. Tweens today want interactive spaces that they can personalize and change as they please, often as rapidly as their tastes and trends fluctuate. Think art galleries, creative writing boards, and other collaborations.

Did I mention making? Tweens are at that fantastical, mystical age where you can plop play dough on the table in front of them, and they will squeal with delight as they roll out snakes and coils, reminiscing about their long ago childhood years. The very next day, those same tweens will be wielding tweezers and 3-D printed model hand parts as they build a working hand prosthetic, in the library. So many tween spaces now include mobile carts and other creative “creating stations” that focus on incorporating STEM and STEAM activities into drop in activities in the library that inspire curiosity on a whim – no signing up for a program weeks in advance here. In tween spaces, programs are often the spontaneous, drop in variety.

So take a look around – does your library have a space dedicated to tween users, one that they can call their own? Are you on the fence, trying to determine if this type of space is a want or a need in your community? If you are headed to ALA Annual in Orlando, please come by at 8:30 am on Saturday, June 26, as I discuss this very topic in the program: InBeTween – Programs and Services for Tweens in Public Libraries. You will also see a wide variety of tween spaces from around the country, in libraries small and large. If you have a tween space that you want to share, please reach out to me at [email protected]. I’d love some more examples of tweens using – and loving- their library spaces!

Lisa G. Kropp is the Assistant Director at the Lindenhurst Memorial Library in NY. She is the co-chair of ALSC’s Liaisons to National Organizations committee and the outgoing chair of the Managing Children’s Services Committee. Tweet hello to her @lisagkropp!

The post Tween Spaces – Wants or Needs? appeared first on ALSC Blog.

#alaac16 is less than a month away!

The ALSC Blog is looking for people interested in live blogging during the upcoming Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Have you looked at the ALSC daily schedule?  SO MANY opportunities to share information with those #leftbehind.

If you are interested in lending your thoughts to this blog about what you are experiencing & learning, contact ALSC Blog manager, Mary Voors, at [email protected]. We’d love to have your contributions! (And your pieces can be very concise… like this post!)

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Environments are imbued with ideals and beliefs about the core values of their institutions.  As public libraries move to a more patron-centered approach, library settings become less formal and more available for collaborative and creative practices.  This year, ALSC President Andrew Medlar will share his vision for active and child-centered learning spaces throughout American Libraries at his Charlemae Rollins President’s Program:  Libraries: The Space to Be. 

Chicago Public Library is the home of Charlemae Rollins, and here at CPL, we see it as our role to enliven the spaces in our children’s rooms in order to encourage and promote what Fred Rogers called “the work of childhood” play-based learning. By creating meaningful and child-friendly spaces, we serve children and their families more deeply.  It is our goal to create active learning spaces that are a meaningful educator for our children and our communities.  Our libraries are considered pioneers in incorporating STEAM opportunities for child and parent engagement, and we are designing space across our system to meet the needs of 21^st Century children and families.  This means age designated ‘neighborhoods’ areas for creativity, collaboration and lots of ways to encourage moments of sharing.  We believe sharing is learning and we want to encourage that in both formal and informal settings.  As our new flagship main children’s library opens later this year, we will roll out even more ways upon which STEAM, early learning and school-aged families can read, discover and create.

In San Francisco, our libraries are family destinations for discovery and community engagement. As part of the library’s early literacy initiative, we partner with the Burgeon Group to design and embed Play to Learn areas in each location.  These site-specific transformations are beacons of play incorporating colorful interactive panels, multilingual features, developmentally appropriate experiences, fine gross activities, texture and tracing elements all to spark spontaneous conversations and build key literacy skills.  (Stoltz, Conner, & Bradbury, 2014) From nook to cubes and the flagship installation at the Main Library, parents, caregivers and most importantly children know play is welcome at the library.

Successful play spaces are those that engage children’s interest; inspire creativity; allow physical movement; and encourage interaction with both materials in the space and with other children.  Many early childhood spaces are modeled on the Reggio Emilia approach, starting with a welcoming space that is arranged to provide opportunities for children to make choices and discover on their own.  Once children have explored, adults facilitate play around subjects or objects in which the child shows interest. This child-driven model is a natural fit for an active learning setting in a library, where children have free access to a variety of resources from books to toys to art materials.  Research shows that having quality books placed at children’s eye level supports literacy-related activities like those that occur when children play in library spaces. (Neuman, 1999)

The Reggio Emilia approach has also been shown to be equally effective for young children who do not speak English, a situation common in Chicago and San Francisco (Zhang, Fallon & Kim, 2009).  Leslie William and Yvonne DeGaetano note the importance of creating culturally relevant spaces based on children’s own communities in Alerta:  A MultiCultural, Bilingual Approach to Teaching Young Children.

Play is a necessary building block for children’s brain development, along with culture and the creative mindset. (Gauntlett & Thomsen, 2013) It is so essential for life that the United Nations recognizes play as a human right for every child.  Play allows children to explore and experiment with their environments, building synaptic connections in the brain and helping children establish problem solving skills as early as 6 months of age.  The American Library Association-Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) recommends that play be incorporated into library programming, recognizing the direct correlation between play and early literacy.

There are five general types of play that children engage in.  These can all be supported in our libraries, and each type of play supports both children’s general development and literacy in a variety of ways.  These include:

• sensory play
• constructive play with objects
•  symbolic play
• pretend play
• rule-based play such as games.

Some of the elements that are shared by both Chicago Public Library and San Francisco Public Library include:

• Creation of connections and sense of belonging
• Flexible and open-ended materials
• Materials that support the ECRR2 practices ( TALK, SING, READ, WRITE, PLAY)
• Stimulation of wonder, curiosity and intellectual engagement for children and their caregivers
• Symbolic representations, literacy and visual arts
• Flexible furniture and arrangements
• Different levels and heights of displays or tools
• Nooks to read and/or work
• Open-ended activities and tools that can be transformed by the child’s interest
• Places for individuals as well as groups
• Creation Station and maker areas for encouraging design, exploration and creation
• Parent and caregiver incubator space
• Areas and resources for constructive, dramatic and creative play
• Appealing signage and parent tips to support family learning

As co-chairs, we are eager to have you join us at President Medlar’s Charlemae Rollins President’s Program to learn more about successful elements of library design for 21^st Century Kids and hope to see you there!

— Liz McChesney, Director of Children’s Services, Chicago Public Library
— Christy Estrovitz, Manager of Youth Services, San Francisco Public Library

References

• Stoltz, Dorthy, Marisa Conner, James Bradbury. (2014). The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces. ALA Editions.
• Gauntlett, David & Thomsen, Bo Stjerne. (2013). Cultures of Creativity: Nurturing Creative Minds Across Cultures. The LEGO Foundation.
• Nespeca, Sue McCleaf. (2012) The Importance of Play, Particularly Constructive Play, in Public Library Programming.
• Zhang, Jie, Fallon, Moira & Kim, Eun-Joo. The Reggio Emilia Curricular Approach for Enhancing Play Development of Young Children.

The post Preparing for the 2016 ALSC President’s Program appeared first on ALSC Blog.

How we serve the youngest of children and their families is, of course, a major priority for children’s librarians.  Besides our services, our spaces can also accommodate each of the major practices of Every Child Ready to Read 2 for our smallest of learners and their grownups.  At this year’s ALSC Charlemae Rollins President’s Program:  Libraries: the Space to Be, we will be discussing President Medlar’s vision of how to bring both big and small ways into our libraries  to enliven spaces to maximize learning outcomes.

Whether you have a grant for space redesign or are just adding a little nook space, there are practical and easy ways to plan for, and then create space for the five practices. In Orlando, we can see and learn from best practices across the nation so that we all can find ways to activate your space for talk, sing, read, write and play practices:  all so essential to young children and their grownups.

First, creating a play space in your library allows for a new type of learning in our spaces:  active, engaged learning that allows children to problem solve and take on the role of learning by doing and being the ‘expert’ in any situation.  Play spaces help families learn together and celebrate their successes as important roles in children’s learning.  It has been documented at the Chicago Public Library that where we have put in play spaces we see families staying up to 40% longer, returning more often, attending more programs and coming together across communities to learn together as families and build friendships.  These all benefit 21^st Century’s library goals, and are important for us as we promote our services to stakeholders.

The benefits of play are numerous and the LEGO Foundation spells them out in their Power of Play white paper which cites play as critical to the ‘balanced development of children’.  Play allows children to use their imagination and creativity, and is, at base, a form of communication.  It has been called essential to human development, and the UN calls it a fundamental right of children.  And libraries are proudly joining in as places for play as we embrace learning in its many environments.  Of the five types of play:  Physical Play, Play with Objects, Symbolic Play, Pretend and Socio-Emotional play and Games with Rules,   can you find some easy ways to incorporate play into your spaces and programming?

And what about the other four skills?  Think about ways you can encourage talking in your library.  A library pet goldfish in a bowl with a simple question or prompt about the fish each week, a comparison chart of your height to various animals, bean sprouts growing in baggies on the windows or a whisper tube such as the one Amanda Roberson at Hartford County Public Library, St. Mary’s County Library has installed are all inexpensive, fun and whimsical ways to encourage families to talk with one another.  Close your own eyes and visualize the moment a whispered “I love you” between a parent and child travels all along the talk tube and into the ear, the brain and the heart of the receiving child.  Or consider the thrill families will have upon finding and discovering their bean sprouts have grown since their last visit to you.

Singing happens in story hours all the time: we sing songs, action rhymes, play music and dance, but why leave it for just program time?  What if you had a nursery rhyme or children’s song station and a small, play microphone?  Encourage children and their adults to take turns singing the song of the week.  What a goofy and fun station that can encourage breaking language down into its basic parts.

Reading we know has its foundations in various aspects of ECCR2 such as letter recognition and print awareness.  Add letter toys such as Lakeshore Learning’s Alphabet Apples or their Magnetic alphabet maze into your play areas to help encourage letter recognition.  These toys encourage play with letters and phonemic awareness.  Integrate such toys into your books for a fun, literacy play experience.

Writing:  Dr. Nell Duke talks about the significance of writing in early literacy development, but how can we add this into a physical space?  Think about an easel white board that can be put in your space with accessible markers,  write and wipe lapboards for writing letters in story hours, or a letter writing or post box station.  Sentence start strips are also great ways for children and families to feel ownership in the library and can be an easy way to decorate:  Start a bulletin board with the letters “On my way to the library, I saw….” And then leave sentence strips out for families to complete.  Young children can dictate their sentence or story which can lead to a great bonding experience and fun narrative skills.  Then, add these to your board as a fun and easy way to create a fresh display that is child centered.

Please join President Andrew Medlar at this year’s ALSC Charlemae Rollins President’s Program: Libraries: The Space to Be to learn more from the experts around the country:  folks like you!  National experts in space design and children’s creativity will be side by side for a fascinating panel discussion on creative children’s space.  Best practices for small, medium and large libraries will be showcased in this important look into how space and our programs in libraries transform.

We hope you can join us!

Liz McChesney, Chicago Public Library
Co-chair Charlemae Rollins President Program 2016

Christy Estrovitz, San Francisco Public Library
Co-chair Charlemae Rollins President Program 2016

The post Creating Spaces that Celebrate Every Child Ready to Read 2 appeared first on ALSC Blog.

One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow . . . [and] no one could wait for the holidays to start.

–J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

The writing’s on the wall at the Central Children’s Library in Denver!

As the days get shorter and colder in the northern hemisphere and the holidays arrive, it’s been a busy season!

A couple of weeks ago I was in Denver (where it’s already snowed about as much as at Hogwarts) reaching out to those gathered for the LENA Research Foundation conference (#lena2015), the theme of which was “Parents Have the Power: Solving the ‘early catastrophe’ through science and parental investment.” It was an ideal opportunity to share the work ALSC is doing with Babies Need Words Every Day and in our partnership with PLA on Every Child Ready to Read, and I joined a panel with a pediatrician, health policy professor, and early learning innovator to discuss what each of us can bring to the work of making sure children are ready to read. Dr. Dana Suskind, author of Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain, gave the conference keynote, and we also heard from the Campaign for Grade Level Reading; Kara Dukakis, Director of Too Small to Fail; and Carine Risley, Library Services Manager at San Mateo County Library in California. I was delighted to be joined by children’s librarians from across Colorado, and of course it’s always fun to visit the Denver Public Library, where I saw many piles of cardboard (have you read Amy Seto Forrester’s recent post yet?) and many, many instances of kids talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing—thanks Ann Schwab, Rachel Hartman, and Lauren Dennis! (You can see all of the conference presentations here.)

The greeting at the Bangor airport

I’m most grateful to ALSC member Louise Capizzo (@Lcapizzo) for inviting me to be a part of this year’s Maine Library Association Annual Conference in Bangor where I was lucky enough to present a keynote about ALSC’s work, entitled “The Future: Moving Forward, Reaching Out, Giving Back.” I had an absolutely fantastic time and was thrilled to be joined at the conference by my ALSC Board colleague Vicky Smith, as well as ALA president Sari Feldman, right off the plane from the Sharjah Library Conference, who inspired us all with her Libraries Transform message.

Paul Bunyan welcomes MLA conference attendees on a beautiful Maine morning.

On this trip my #ALSCtour took me to the Brewer Public Library and I arrived just as storytime was wrapping up and the whole building, parking lot, and playground (the library has their own) was filled with happiness! Many thanks to director Katie Conner, children’s librarian Shelley Arnold, and all of their wonderful colleagues for all they do for the kids of Brewer, Maine every day!

Miss Shelley hangs a Babies Need Words Every Day poster in the Brewer Public Library’s children’s room.

And December may be icy at Hogwarts, but it’s warm and sunny in Puerto Rico, which made this the perfect time for me to visit and–even better!–get to work with 2010 Belpré Honor winner Georgina Lázaro León to film a promo for next year’s 20^th anniversary of the Pura Belpré Award. Working together with our Belpré partner, REFORMA, we shot it on the grounds of Escuela Central de Artes Visuales, the building where Pura Belpré attended high school in San Juan’s Santurce neighborhood, which is where she lived until moving to New York in the 1920s and going on to be the first Puerto Rican librarian at New York Public Library. Stay tuned for the final cut of our video and in the meantime save the date for the Belpré celebración at ALA Annual in Orlando on Sunday, June 26, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Yours truly & Georgina Lázaro León, ready for our close-up

This is one among many, many wonderful things coming in 2016 as we all continue to work together to build a better future for children though libraries!

The post On the Road Again, Reaching Out appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Do you see a trend in youth services that needs to be addressed? Have an idea for a great program proposal?

The ALSC Program Coordinating Committee has opened a call for two Hot Topic Programs to be presented at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, June 23-26, 2016.

Participants attending ALSC programs are seeking valuable educational experiences and are critical of presenters or sessions that are self-promotional. Presentations should advance the educational process and provide a valuable learning experience. The Program Coordinating Committee will not select a program session that suggests commercial sales or self-promotion.

Further information and the online application are available on the link above. All proposals must be submitted by Sunday, December 13, 2015.

Image courtesy of ALA

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