Reading Together at Ohaeawai School

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOkyR9IOenw

School librarian Liz Christensen talks about how the role school library has been a critical success factor in supporting literacy development at Ohaeawai School.

Transcript

Liz Christensen: We've been really pleased to be a part of the Reading Together® programme.

It's been very, very successful in this school. Right from the beginning, the library was the main focus of the whole programme.

All the meetings were in the library, and I was a key part of delivering information and helping parents choose books.

I gave many talks on how to choose an appropriate book for their children and different fonts and font sizes, interesting covers, and hooking children into series, and being quite specific about their own children.

It's been great having whānau in the school.

And I've opened up borrowing to family units so the kids and the parents have barcodes and I've opened up the library as well.

So from 8 o'clock in the morning until — we normally close at 2:30, the school finishes at 2:30 — but I have the library open till 3:00 for parents to call in with their children and choose books together.

And it's lovely, it's just lovely, they've really … it has made a huge difference to the children, having the parents involved. And it's made a huge difference to the parents, knowing how to approach books and what books to choose. I think a lot of parents just were a little out of their depth.

So we've opened it up, not only to the parents, but we're looking at the local play centre and opening it up to the wider community and then getting parents in before their children even start schools.