PLA Blog

Today I attended “The Fun and Facts of Early Literacy” preconference. We spent the bulk of the day learning about the six early literacy skills PLA and ALSC have identified as important for preschoolers to learn to build a foundation for learning to read and later academic success. Presenters Pamela Martin-Diaz and Saroj Ghoting, coauthors of Early Literacy Storytimes @ Your Library, focused on ways librarians can use story times as a vehicle to teach parents and caregivers ways they can work with children at home to build these skills. They encouraged participants to begin looking at books, rhymes, and songs in new ways, thinking of how we can emphasize the way they build things like phonemic awareness and vocabulary. Martin-Diaz and Ghoting rightly pointed out that we as public librarians can only have so much of an impact on the skills of individual children during story times. We need to work with parents and caregivers to make a real, lasting difference.

A highlight of the morning was when we all pretended to be the connections between neurons. It was fun until I turned out to be an extraneous connection and got pruned. I would like to note that neither of the people sitting next to me got pruned.

In spite of what I now think of as “The Pruning Incident,” I learned a lot of information I’ll be thinking about when I’m back home planning and doing story times. One of the most profound moments of the day for me was when one of the presenters mentioned that we should occasionally remember to share books in a less animated way that parents might be more inclined to try to imitate at home. I don’t know why that never occurred to me before.

For lunch today, I met up with friends for lunch in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library. We got some great food at Sebastians Café, and it was lovely to sit outside in the sun chatting about the morning’s adventures. I second Anne: if you’re here in Boston, don’t miss exploring the library and taking a spin through the Tomi Ungerer exhibit in the Popular Reading Room. If you aren’t in Boston, I’m sorry. On the bright side, I think I’m eating enough food for all of us.

Tags: conferences, PLA, PLA2006

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 at 10:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.