Feature wiki – Whitefriars College “Reading – Active and engaging

Whitefriars College Head of Library and Information Services (and School Library Association of Victoria President) Rhonda Powling has created an incredible wiki. Entitled “Reading – active and engaging”, Rhonda’s wiki focusses on strategies for engaging students with reading, particularly for boys (as Whitefriars is a boys’ school).

Homepage
Homepage

Rhonda has introduced her students to ‘Book trailers’ This  is where students make a movie style trailer advertising a book. Rhonda’s rationale for introducing the student to book trailers includes:

There are many students who seem disengaged at school. It has been said that young people are not reading and won’t write anymore than they absolutely must.
Outside school, however, it is a different story. Studies have shown young people are reading and writing incessantly, updating their MySpace/Facebook pages, keeping blogs and WebPages

In other words they are reading and writing but in different modes and media to the more traditional print literacies of the 20th century. Indeed the definition of literacy is evolving all the time. Literacy can no longer just encompass print-only works. In the 21st century literacy must include digital, hypertext, images and the plethora of communication media that make up the complex systems that bound in today’s world.

The complexity of messages in today’s world means that our students have to not only know how to “read” them but also know enough about them to be critical viewers, with the power to analyse and understand the obvious and more obscure meanings of the messages around them.

Students are bringing multi-literacy skills to the classroom and teachers tap into their interests and skills and then enhance their students’ understanding of these various diverse texts. This will enable them to become skilled at critically viewing any of the diverse texts that is presented to them so that they can confidently use all the media around them to learn, clarify and communicate information rather than by passive users who can be coerced, confused and persuaded by the unscrupulous.

Some statistics: (in 2008)
· 73% or ¾ students on the internet watch or download videos
· ½ of the young internet users say they watch YouTube
· Many young people post videos to blogs and even more forward on a link in an email
· They are socializing, researching, playing games, getting news via technologies.
In schools we need to look at innovative ways to capture the interest and commitment of students to the understanding the deep-thinking and as the learning world because more and more immersive these initiatives are an important step.

 Rhonda has supplied some examples of book trailers developed by her students.

 

 The General

Nemesis Book 1: Into the shadows

AdsRus

Rhonda has included the process of storyboarding and planning before students begin filming:

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Also included is an assessment rubric:

Assessment rubric

Assessment rubric

You have to agree that Rhonda has created a sensational unit or work and seeing the students’ brilliant efforts only reinforces what a wonderful job Rhonda has done to bring the love of reading to students in this age of multimedia.

Terrific reading role model and good sports citizen for school libraries

This recent article in the School Library Journal is an example of a great idea. Got to love the way that the libraries have been consulted about wish lists, distribution has been organised and even new shelving has been factored in…

Baseball’s Kevin Youkilis Goes to Bat for Young Readers

 By Rocco Staino — School Library Journal, 9 July 2009

Kevin Youkilis, an all-star first baseman with the Boston Red Sox, is going to bat for young readers with his Hits for Kids, an organization that hopes to collect 100,000 new or gently used books for Boston’s public school libraries over a two day period.

bostonCreated by Youkilis, along with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and other corporate sponsors, the goal is to receive donations at each of Fenway Park’s five entrances during the Red Sox weekend series against the Kansas City Royals on Saturday, July 11 and Sunday, July 12.

“We want this campaign to be as successful as possible, and that is why we are swinging for the fences and have set our collection goal at over 100,000 books,” says Enza Sambataro-Youkilis, the player’s wife and president of Hits for Kids. “Judging by the passion that the Red Sox and their fans have for the City of Boston, we are confident that we will surpass our goal.”

Boston Public Schools has created a wish list of close to 150 recommended titles, from Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s One Boy(Roaring Brook) and Anna McQuinn’s Lola at the Library(Charlesbridge) to Carl Hiassan’s Scat (Knopf) and Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (Random). And students from Lesley University  have volunteered to help sort the books in preparation for distribution.

“This will be an incredible shot in the arm for the 94 schools that will be recipients of this generous donation,” says Karin Kell Deyo, a senior program director for the district’s library media services. “This donation will go a long way to help us with boost our print collection for our early readers in that critical time in their literacy education.”

 kevinyoukilisYouk (as he is nicknamed), 30, a Cincinnati native, was signed to the Red Sox in 2004, and last January, he inked a $41.25 million contract. In 2007, he began his foundation, which is dedicated to rallying local and corporate support for charities focused on the health and wellbeing of children.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the lead underwriter, will match each book donation and donate shelves to some school libraries in the city. “We are planning, in some instances, for a full transformation of school libraries-from empty shelves to fully-supplied libraries,” says Houghton spokesman, Josef Blumenfeld.

Valvoline Instant Oil Change will also accept book donations at all of their Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island locations.

What a terrific reading role model Kevin is as well as being a good sports citizen for school libraries. Congratulations to all involved. Wouldn’t it be lovely if some sportspeople in Australia did something similar?

BookGlutton

BookGlutton is a website for the book glutton in all of us. It provides a number of online book clubs where readers can select which type of group/s they’d like to join whether it be by book or by friendship group.

Homepage
Homepage

Full text books can be read online without the need for a specialised e-book reader. BookGlutton also offers notes for books that you are interested in reading. Readers have the ability to read, annotate and discuss books online. Some more information is available here:

 

 

More help in the form of FAQs can be accessed as well.

BookGlutton is a very clever idea melding, two of the burgeoning areas of reading; e-books and book groups.

Authors lobby government for statutory school libraries

An article in today’s (UK time) Guardian newspaper outlines how popular children’s and YA authors have sent a petition to 10 Downing Street asking for schools to have statutory rights to a library.

Written by Alison Flood guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 July 2009 12.01 BST

 pic1

Reading in the school library. Photograph: Graham Turner

A high-profile group of children’s authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory. Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, top children’s publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library associations.

The campaign’s supporters, who also include the Carnegie medal winners Mal Peet and Beverley Naidoo, are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure. “[We] wholeheartedly support the right of prisoners to a library. It can be part of the process of rehabilitation through education. We are concerned however that school students do not have the same right. Research indicates that many young people who offend have low literacy levels,” they say in a letter that will be sent to secretary of state for children, schools and families Ed Balls this evening by the campaign’s head, the twice Carnegie-shortlisted author Alan Gibbons.

Only half of all secondary schools have a full-time librarian, they say, and only 28% have a qualified librarian. “Sadly, some of our schools still lack adequate library provision,” they write. “It would not be expensive to rectify this situation, even in these difficult times. The social costs of poor literacy are significant.”

Gibbons said this morning that the petition was only the start of a concerted campaign to make school libraries statutory. “When it’s just the book world, particularly if it’s just libraries, the government feels less pressure than if it is a broad cultural movement supporting literacy,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been working on publishers, teaching professionals and public service unions.”

Last November Pullman told a comprehensive school in Chesterfield that it would become “a byword for philistinism and ignorance” if it went ahead with plans to close its school library. Since then, Gibbons said, there have been “worrying indications” that more school libraries are likely to close. “It’s nibbling at the edges at the moment but the signs are there that they are being cut down,” he said. “We want to at least get the discussion going about how to deal with it.”

The petition itself – which calls on the government “to accept in principle that it will make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory” – will run until December, but by the end of the summer school term Gibbons hopes to have consolidated the support of the book world and to have started soliciting support from community figures, faith groups and celebrities within the wider community.

Harry Potter creator JK Rowling, he added, was top of his list. “We don’t want to stand on the sidelines – we want to engage with government,” he said.

Teen Librarian

British website Teen Librarian (no, our colleagues are not getting younger before our very eyes, it’s for librarians who work in young adult settings) provides some excellent resources for those of us who work in schools or public libraries.

Homepage

Homepage

The site has book trailers, book reviews (and I love that the book the website author is currently reading is Melbourne’s Lili Wilkinson‘s Scatterheart), event ideas, information on graphic novels, ‘films of the book’ and more.

The monthly newsletter, although includes some content specific to the United Kingdom, has some interesting author interviews and book reviews. Well worth a look!

The Publisher’s Office

Penguin USA has developed a very interesting website, that adds value to their publications. The Publisher’s Office.

Homepage
Homepage

From the website comes the following information:

At Penguin we know that readers have a wide variety of interests and that finding an in-depth look at a particular author or subject can be difficult, if not impossible. From the Publisher’s Office makes it easy to learn more about your favorite authors-and to discover a few new favorites in the process. We hope you’ll watch, listen to, and read the programs found on these pages.

WATCH! In the Screening Room you can watch shows produced by us on a wide range of topics-from whether hypnosis really works to what Jon Scieszka, Ambassador for Children’s Literature, thinks about when he’s sitting down to write. From how an author and illustrator collaborate to create beloved characters to a look at what vampire romance fans are after now.

LISTEN! In the Radio Room you can hear editors at Penguin Classics interview scholars about enduring works, get tips for running a great small business, learn how following your passion can lead to professional success, and peek inside a poet’s process.

READ! In the Reading Room you can read early excerpts from a soon-to-be-published novel and read articles from some of our biggest nonfiction authors. Be sure to come back to chat with the author in one of our scheduled live chats.

 The Young Adult Central section sees videos of author interviews conducted by young adults.

YA Central
YA Central

A wonderful website for anyone interested in books, and the adult section could be useful for schools where literature is taught. YA Central has much to offer teenagers and the school libraries that cater for them. It would be lovely to see Penguin Australia add some Australian content or even start their own version of The Publisher’s Office.

The Role of Reading in Guided Inquiry: Building Engagement and Understanding

Following on from a previous post about the excellent professional learning session delivered by Dr Ross J Todd from the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey; his colleague Dr Carol A Gordon presented an interesting session last week to School Library Association of Victoria delegates.

The Role of Reading in Guided Inquiry: Building Engagement and Understanding was the second presentation  of the day. If you are interested in the link between effective reading and the resulting effective researching, please view and consider this engaging, relevant and thoughtful and presentation.

The notes below are a record of the session:

Carol Gordon – The Role of Reading in Guided Inquiry: Building Engagement and Understanding

  • Reading with older students; learning phonics for 14 year olds in demeaning. Research came up with what did work. These are strategies that came from evidence-based research. Context is inquiry.
  • Can use information search process as a framework for these strategies.
  • “Children reading for Gilad Shalit” YouTube video shows real engagement even though students were previously struggling readers.
  • Need commitment, emotional attachment and engagement for the students to learn to research well.
  • We want the whole Blooms. Creating, evaluating, analysing, applying, understanding and remembering.
  • Authentic learning tasks such as this one based on Anne Frank: http://projects.edtech.Sandi.net/lewis/annefrank/t-index.htm “A bit of outrage is a good thing that helps them engage with the task.” This is asking kids to be historians rather than journalists. Historians want to know the truth. Use primary documents and artifacts and interpret the evidence as they see it. Deep understanding of what history is, what historians do and the questions that they ask. Task to a high academic level. Problem solving, decision making, display and share their work. Choices about how they present; radio broadcast, write a news story, etc. Interdisciplinary applications. Methodology needs to encourage kids to use the new information in another way; relate to other situations; Blooms, variety in tasks. Keep a journal of blog to see how they are doing. Opportunities to work in groups and revise their work. Use rubrics to show students what good, average and poor looks like. We give them opportunities to reflect. Time is a pressure, but they need time to think. We must build that time in. Show them an exemplar of what a good news story looks like. Self assessment and peer review. Get kids to evaluate the task for you. How did it go for them? You will learn by asking them. You can then change this for the next time this is taught.
  • Formative assessments are based on journals, rubrics, portfolios, peer review, self-evaluations, Graphic organizers, Mapping, Checklists, Statements of intent, Rough drafts.
  • Reading skills are thinking skills. Our role in reading is much more expansive.
  • Free choice is the most important thing in terms of reading engagement.
  • Book; “Strategies that work” by Anne Goudvis and Stephanie Harvey is worth looking at.
  • How is reading digital text different from reading print text? “Are we losing the deep culture of reading?” is a more pertinent question rather than “is the book dead?” Better for kids to print out rather than read from the screen as an intermediate step. Graphic organisers and concept mapping and Wordle are not enough. Use printouts to analyse notes so that you know what they really mean and you can work out what is important and what you should use. Hard copy is really important. Passive kinds of approach to reading is not getting kids where they need to be. Encourage them to annotate and gather, sort.
  • Never give a child something to read that is at instructional or frustration level if you expect them to read it independently. Need help with this at school.
  • When comprehension breaks down, many students skip sections or words that are confusing and pick the text up again where they can understand it. The problem is, they have lost valuable information and opportunity to improve their own reading. 
  • Activating Prior Knowledge (GNR) Emotional attachment needed. Prior knowledge is who you are; your experiences, your emotions. Tap into this to help kids read well.
  • o Establishing prior knowledge, or what the learner already knows, is critical to helping them read better. Research shows that there is no difference between the recall of good and poor readers when their prior knowledge is the same. Therefore, prior knowledge can be instrumental in improving reading comprehension.
  • § Here is an example. Mrs. Clark announces to the class that they are going on a nature walk. They go outside and walk across the street to a county nature park. They walk about a half-mile and stop. They sit down and Mrs. Clark asks the class to imagine that they are lost. She asks the students to help her come up with some ideas about how they can figure out where they are, and how they will get back to school. One student suggests backtracking until they recognize where they are. Another student suggests walking until someone recognizes a familiar tree or flower as a landmark. Another student suggests that Mrs. Clark use her cell phone to call the park supervisor to come and find them.
  • § Mrs. Clark relates each of the answers the students give to clarifying what you are reading.
  • § Backtracking is similar to rereading material when you realize that you have lost your way in the story and do not know what is happening. Looking for familiar landmarks is similar to readers activating prior knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax (Hackey, et al, 2003). Calling the park supervisor on a cell phone relates to referring to outside resources, such as dictionaries or atlases. The students begin to understand that pretending they are not lost is not going to get them out of the woods, and pretending to understand what they are reading when they really did not will not enable them to fully understand the reading assignment.
  • § When the class arrives safely to their classroom, Mrs. Clark gives the students a reading assignment and a pad of sticky notes. She models reading a short passage and marking words or concepts she is not quite sure of with the sticky notes. Students then practice reading independently and highlight any words or concepts that they do not understand in the text.
  • § The next day, they write the words they marked on the board. Mrs. Clark models ways to determine the meaning of the words, such as using a dictionary, using keywords surrounding the unfamiliar word, using picture clues, and rereading. The students are comforted to realize that many students wrote the same words on the board. This helps them to build a community of learners and helps Mrs. Clark to identify vocabulary words that need further explanation.
  • Kids pretend that they don’t have the breakdown in comprehension and they get more and more lost and disengaged. Kids need to be taught to ask questions.                                                                                             
  • o Brainstorming. Developing a purpose for reading.
  • o K-W-L chart.
  • o Using Visuals to assess prior knowledge. Why pictures? They inspire questions and interest. They provide a tangible element when focus blurs and clarity is elusive. Offer a starting point. Offer support of a group working with similar themes, situations. Record in a reflection sheet (done as a group).
  • o Use Wordle to create a reading/writing summary. Words that evoke images? Good self-analysis tool for peer assessment.
  • o Wordsift analyses text. More sophisticated. Concept map and mind maps are different. Asking kids to explain why topics/words are connected. These helps kids that are on information overload.
  • o Voicethread uses voice. They can create their own book talks. Naugatuck HS on VoiceThread. Authentic learning.
  • o Determining importance, All information is not equal. Get rid of what is not important. Illustrations are important; they can represent data in a table, graph, etc. Use these tools to elaborate on an idea. A quotation is an illustration. They need to elaborate on it and link it to one of their ideas.
  • o Statement of Intent with research question. TL must sign off on it. Passport to continue.
  • o Information circles. Idea of Literature circles and adapted to informational text. Group kids by topics they are interested in. Break up tasks. Students have roles (leader, illustrator, vocab guru).
  • o Different types of questions. Some info is literal, some is inferred. Give them ‘what if’ questions.
  • o Sticky notes or Diigo.
  • o Graphic organisers are very good for analysis. We don’t give kids the tools to process the information that they find. Graphic organisers give kids the ability to process and analyse notes.
  • o Kidspiration/Inspiration
  • o Inferring and predicting are just as important for informational text. Read with higher interest.
  • o Blogs effective with helping with reading, They read each other’s work. Get kids prepared for class. Framework for thinking about pre-reading. Many kids will read a blog rather than a book. Their absence is visible from a blog.
  • o Best books for visualizations: Visualize This: Books about the Arts, Notes on a Page: Books about Music, Into the Past: Books about History,
  • o Theories and Revelations: Books about Math and Science, Challenges and Change: Stories of Politics, Identity, and Understanding, Seriously Surreal: Tales of (Im)possibility, Over-the-Top: Sly and Sophisticated Humor, All Cracked Up: Fractured Fairy Tales and Fables
  • o Double entry journal. Quotes/My thoughts about quotes. Forces kids to interpret. Do I understand what I have read?
  • o Kids have to make connections with their reading text, eguse graphic novels for visual alternatives for stories
  • o 16 Steps to Monitoring and Regaining Comprehension
  • § 1. Reread.
  • § 2. Read ahead.
  • § 3. Stop to think
  • § 4. Try to visualize.
  • § 5. Ask a new question.
  • § 6. Make a prediction.
  • § 7. Study the illustration or other text feature.
  • § 8. Ask someone for help.
  • § 9 figure out unknown words.
  • § 10. Look at the text structure.
  • § 11. Make an inference.
  • § 12. Connect to background knowledge.
  • § 13. Read the author’s or illustrator’s note.
  • § 14. Write about the confusing parts.
  • § 15. Make an effort to think about the message.
  • § 16. Define/Redefine the purpose for reading the text.

 The School Library Association of Victoria should be congratulated for providing such transformational and important professional learning sessions. Thanks to Rhonda Powling for supplying Bright Ideas with some photos from the session.

Powering Up Minds and Powering Up Machines: Guided Inquiry, Reading and Web 2.0

Dr Ross J Todd and Dr Carol A Gordon from the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey presented two vital presentations this week to the Planning Learning Perspectives: Guided Inquiy Masterclass held by the School Library Association of Victoria.

Powering Up Minds and Powering Up Machines: Guided Inquiry, Reading and Web 2.0  is the first presentation and an exceptionally vibrant one. If you are interested in supporting students right through the researching, writing and presenting stages of assignments, you must experience Dr Ross J Todd’s powerful presentation.

The notes below are a record of the session.

Ross Todd – Powering Up Minds and Powering Up Machines: Guided Inquiry, Reading, and Web 2.0

  • Guided inquiry is not about ‘finding stuff’ but creating something with that stuff!
  • When classes come to the library, there is intensive information finding, printing, downloading, then we stop them coming to the library and send them off on their own! We abandon them at the most critical time of knowledge building.
  • We need to walk with kids on the information to knowledge journey. We must intervene instructionally along their journey. We can’t just assume kids can do these things on their own. We must support kids in ways that we’ve not traditionally done.
  • Guided inquiry is a partnership with teacher librarians, teachers and students.
  • Students often feel that they are doing research projects against their will.
  • The information world is not all safe and secure nor accurate. We have to get students to see this.
  • “Libraries should be cesspools of intellectual discontent”.
  • How do we really develop kids as critical thinkers?
  • Cut and paste article from Wikipedia and run it through Wordle. This gives them the vocabulary of the topic.
  • Run school library information policy through Wordle. What does it say? Run research assignments through Wordle. Are they superficial? Describe/list? Or Bloom’s higher order level? Examine intellectual capacity of what you are asking kids to do.
  • We need to get over define, locate, select. This contributes to plagiarism because they don’t know what to do with the stuff that they find. Yes important, but we need to construct ideas.
  • Carol Kuhlthau’s research model. Frameworks and structures that are built on research.
  • How we use the Web 2.0 tools to build deep knowledge. How do we support them all the way along?
  • Plan deep and rich inquiry based projects.
  • Kids begin with limited, vague knowledge. This is okay. All our kids begin searching with Google. Let’s work with it. Google, Wikipedia(quite reasonable) this is helping them get their head aroundthe topic. Don’t stop this as they are trying to build a knowledge picture of their topic. These notes should only be for background knowledge. This is where the research process goes wrong. We must give kids choice. This model gives three levels of choice. 1st  choice: selection stage; pick the topic. Must let them build background knowledge first. Wallow in their choice and allow them to get a foothold in it. General resources such as Wikipedia play a role here.
  • 2nd choice: formulation. Kids encounter differences in the background material. Here is where students develop their focus questions that they are going to explore. What makes them curious, what intrigues them? Do this with guidance. Deep knowledge and understanding. This is only developed after they have a background understanding of their topic.
  • Collection stage has 2 important meanings; Background knowledge then move into a secondary set of resources that enables them to ask complex questions. Away from elemental stuff to a higher level of resources. How do I now construct my knowledge?
  • 3rd choice: presentation. How am I best going to represent my deep knowledge? What is the structure going to be? Who’s going to listen to me? As a journalist reporting? As a scientist making a report to a govt body? May need instructional interventions. Don’t abandon them.
  • VELS and guided inquiry. E5 model fits nicely with the research based inquiry model.
  • How do we use Web 2.0 tools to help develop tools for inquiry? Raft of tools that foster production of content. Generate deep knowledge. Shift to community act of personal engagement with topic to create. Platform gives provision of information, production and sharing information.
  • 45% of 9-12 year olds have online profiles.
  • How do we use ToonDoo and Voki to develop deep knowledge and understanding? We need them to foster thinking and creativity? Important criteria before we select the Web 2.0 tools to use in our classes.
  • How am I using this tool to think? How are kids using this to foster deep thinking? Meta cognition? Do they help kids think? Or just another toy? How do they develop kids reading environment? The way information is structured? Does it help them use language and to read? Need to develop other critical competencies. How do we use them safely? How do we engage and participate? How do we manage the content? Beyond traditional information literacy skills. 
  • How do schools deal with ethical issues? They shut them down. How do we use these environments to deal with inappropriate stuff?  John Dewey. Learning by doing and experiencing. Engage them in safety in some of these environments.
  • Does it promote critical thinking? Where does it fit in the inquiry process?
  • Blogs for blogs sake is a useless experience. How do blogs support inquiry? What are we saying in the blog? What is the message? What’s my response? Provide 5 facts we didn’t know about topic. Sources. Explain something. We need to direct them to learn how to craft a response. Are they being used in an analytical way? Collect and craft responses. Engage critically. Use the blogging space to teach and intellectual ability. Look at the responses. What do you conclude? Sustained and intellectually sound position statement. Reflective response. Thinking process and Personal Learning within VELS. How this space becomes a thinking space for the kids.
  • Uses wikis for groups of students working in one space. A living document. People work together to generate and maintain the document. Wikipedia is the best example of this. Social construction of knowledge; community watchdog, a group of people negotiate meaning. A group’s best effort. Teaching kids how teams work together, how to deal with conflict (others edit entries), negotiation skills, managing documents. Construct a picture of prior knowledge.
  • Use Wikipediastrategically. Fabulous for building background knowledge. Go through an article with them. If there are errors, edit it and fix it. If kids write a fantastic piece about a specific topic, get them to submit it to Wikipedia. That their ideas are worthy of giving back to the universe of knowledge. Formative and summative assessment. Use a wikispace for drafts of their work. PQP. Praise, Questions, Polish.
  • Wonder wheel. Connections and relational documents. Timeline shows primary resources. Google.com/squared creates a topical matrix. Great for building background knowledge. Gives kids a way of building topics selection, choices. Away from constant writing of meaningless facts.

Dr Ross Todd is an energising, transformational educator. If there is ever an opportunity to attend professional development sessions with him, do everything in your power to be there! What an amazing person!

ANZ LitLovers: Lisa Hill’s personal book blog

As readers of Bright Ideas, you are probably already familiar with Lisa Hill. Lisa Hill is the Director of Curriculum and teacher librarian at Mossgiel Park Primary School in Endeavour Hills and has been the feature of two previous Bright Ideas posts: the first about her school library blog and the second focussing on her professional learning blog. Lisa is now kindly sharing her personal reading blog.

Having set up my professional LisaHillSchoolStuff blog in March last year, I found it wasn’t long before I wanted the same sort of space to write online about what really matters to me: reading books.  I am a voracious reader, and have been since childhood. My family travelled a lot but wherever we lived in the world, my father’s first task was to join us up at the nearest library so that we could resume our Saturday routine: a weekly walk to the library where we borrowed as many books as we were allowed, followed by loafing on our beds with a book until late in the afternoon when we were shooed out to play by my mother.

 In 1997 I began journaling my thoughts about the books I read, and I wish I’d started long before that.  When you read about a hundred books a year as I do, the details fade as the years go by.  Although it can be a pleasure to re-read a book, it’s chastening to have to do this when you don’t really want to, in order to join in a conversation about it.  My journal entries range from cursory dismissals of books I didn’t like to long reflections on more complex books such as The Masterby Colm Toibin.  Sometimes my response is deeply personal because the book relates to something in my own life; at other times it’s like an impersonal review.  I wrote pages and pages about my journey through Proust and almost as much again about Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memorybecause it helped me to clarify my thoughts about them.  I still do this journaling, often late at night in bed, even though most of what I read now ends up as a blog post on my ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

ANZ LitLovers home

ANZ LitLovers home

Back in 2002 I had set up ANZ LitLovers as an online reading group and developed a website as a resource for members – but it was always a pain to update it.  When I bought a new computer that didn’t have the necessary software, it seemed to me that a LitBlog was a much easier and more flexible alternative, and I would be part of a growing international LitBlog movement, celebrating Australian Literature in my own little niche.

In the beginning I had ambitious ideas about other members of the group joining in and posting, but this hasn’t happened.  My group members write fluently and with great perception in the privacy of our online group, but they don’t seem to want to publish.  The one exception is a journalist, as comfortable with public writing as I am, but after posting her BBRLMs (Best Books Read Last Month) three times, she hasn’t done so since.  So it has become, by default, my personal LitBlog, a place for me to post my book reviews, and ramble on about book-related topics. 

At the time of writing, it has nearly 9000 hits, and is linked to other LitBlogs around Australia, the UK and the US.  ClusterMaps tells me that I have readers all over the world, but I think the ones in Slovenia, Myanmar and the Maldives must have stumbled on the blog by accident LOL.  However, there have been nearly 2000 viewers in Australia and over 1500 from the US – and these would translate into healthy sales if my writing were a book and not a blog! A growing number of people are commenting on my posts – which now number around 145 and that’s an average of thirteen posts each month since July last year.  I think it’s popular because I’m not a professional reviewer and my style sits somewhere between academic and general reader.  I take care to add the titles and authors as tags, and I categorise my posts to make them easy to find.  And I write often – usually every weekend – so there’s always something new to read if they’ve subscribed using RSS.

My all time top post (not counting the page about our reading schedule and our About page) is the one about Google Books, followed by my review of The Slap   which is on the Miles Franklin shortlist and has been featured prominently in the media.  A post about Modernism  got 17 hits in less than 24 hours, which surprised me, but the one I’m about to write about Patrick White’s Voss won’t be nearly so well-received, I bet!  Another very popular page is our ANZLL Books You Must Read list and a Reading Challengespage, but mostly people find my blog when they Google a particular title: although Perry Middlemiss’s Matilda is theAustralian LitBlog, he has more diverse interests than I do, and there’s not a lot of people writing online about Australian literary fiction or classics like me.  (I write about international contemporary fiction and classics, and non-fiction,  too, but that’s not my focus.)

2009 schedule

2009 schedule

Many people blog solely for their own pleasure and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think that the key to having a blog that others want to read is to find a niche, and to develop a personal style.  I’m a serious reader, and my reviews reflect that, but they’re informal rather than pompous (I hope!) and they’re always my honest opinion.  (The only books I’ve received as review copies are the children’s books I review for Allen and Unwin, and even so I was a bit brutal on one occasion where I really didn’t like the book.) But I don’t just review books, I blog about all kinds of book related things…

 I’ve written about philanthropy for booklovers, about meeting my favourite author Kate Grenville, about rearranging the bookshelves in my library ( that’s the one at home) and about reading by candlelight for Earth Hour. I’ve ticked off a columnist in The Age and suggested Christmas gifts for booklovers.  I succumb to Book Memes (twice), post about festivals that I go to, have a go at predicting who the winners of awards might be, and am not afraid to express my opinion about ‘sacred writers’ who in my opinion are victims of their own overblown status. I jazz up the blog with pictures, maps, videos that tie in with books, book-covers and even an Animoto and I hyperlink almost obsessively so that people can click straight through to anything on another site that I refer to.  These strategies all come courtesy of what I’ve learned from Sue Waters at EduBlogs which is an excellent place to start any learning journey about blogging.

Books you must read

Books you must read

However, the most important point about having a personal blog is that it ought to be something you enjoy.  For me, blogging at ANZ LitLovers is an adjunct to what I already do in my reading journals.  I write for pleasure, at home and online!

Lisa has certainly given so much to others through her blogs and by reflecting on what she has been reading and then writing this for an audience is a terrific skill to have and constantly refine. Once again, well done Lisa and thank you for sharing your passion for books and your amazing amount of work with others. As well as reading Lisa’s blog for personal pleasure, students of English Literature could find some useful and interesting information.

The Horn Book newsletter

Did you know that the very highly regarded children’s literature journal, The Horn Book sends out free email newsletters?

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Subscription page

Click here to subscribe to their newsletter.

In their own words The Horn Book provides:

Each monthly issue features interviews with leading writers and illustrators, brief recommendations of noteworthy titles, and the latest news from the children’s book world.

A great resource and as always if it’s free, as this is, it’s even better.