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"Young people are reading less and failing to build vocabulary amid a sea of text messaging and cyber chat, says literacy and child development specialist Professor Tom Nicholson."

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"Young people are reading less and failing to build vocabulary amid a sea of text messaging and cyber chat, says literacy and child development specialist Professor Tom Nicholson."

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Good reason to display a "word of the day" in your library!

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Professor Tom Nicholson

Young people are reading less and failing to build vocabulary amid a sea of text messaging and cyber chat, says literacy and child development specialist Professor Tom Nicholson.

Professor Nicholson, from the University's College of Education, says the vocabulary deficit is a worrying trend that threatens learning, confidence, future job prospects, relationships, and event the ability to understand jokes.

"If you want your child to be successful at school across all subjects, then building a good vocabulary is critical," he says. "In this increasingly technological world, we don't have the same opportunity to build vocabulary. Reading is coming to be seen as boring and useless, Parents are the last bastion of defence against this peer culture where kids don't see the need to build vocabulary."

In his new book Teaching Reading Vocabulary, Professor Nicholson urges teachers and parents to offset linguistic "dumbing down" by encouraging children not only to read more, but to use a dictionary and a thesaurus. While these might seem old-fashioned tools in the minds of today's electronic generation, he says the dictionary remains the "holy grail" for word acquisition and knowledge of multiple meanings.

Every child should have a dictionary," Professor Nicholson says. "Just by looking up a new word, the process mentally glues it into the memory. Words are slippery customers - you need a definition and understanding of the various contexts it might be used in."

Professor Nicholson was shocked by results of his survey last year of year-four and five pupils, who were largely reluctant to use a dictionary at home or in class. He also cites New Zealand research by the National Education Monitoring Project suggesting the reading habits of the young are in decline. In 2008 only 21 per cent of year-four and 20 per cent of year-eight pupils ranked reading as one of their top three leisure activities, a 10 per cent drop from the same survey in 2000.

He says it is this resistance to reading and learning new words that teachers and parents need to actively combat by encouraging young readers to consider the dictionary and thesaurus as "their best friends". "Parents can do this by making sure their child actually has a dictionary and by modelling use of it in everyday life, such as when they hear an unknown word on television, radio or in a conversation.

"Possessing a good vocabulary enables and empowers people of all ages to be understood in social, educational and work situations. It would stop a lot of fights in the playground and in life if people had the ability to express themselves with words more competently," he says.

While readers can access online dictionaries, including the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary which defines well over half a million words, a hard copy is more user friendly and easier to pick up wherever you are, he says.

Professor Nicholson, far from being a literacy Luddite, is adapting his highly successful reading clinics Auckland to provide one-on-one tuition with distance students over the Internet using Skype. He is adamant, however, that while texting, Twitter, Facebook, blogging and other forms of cyber communication are here to stay, they cannot replicate the discipline and value of reading books and using a dictionary and thesaurus for improving verbal virtuosity.

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Vocabulary on decline due to fewer books

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Young people are reading less and failing to build vocabulary amid a sea of text messaging and cyber chat, says literacy and child development specialist Professor Tom Nicholson. Professor Nicholson, from the University's College of Education, says the vocabulary deficit is a worrying trend that threatens learning, confidence, future job prospects, relationships, and event the ability to understand jokes.

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Gen Z wants to free the world from ‘outdated’ email

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Gen Z wants to free the world from ‘outdated’ email

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Save us from email, Gen Z!

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Gen Z wants to free the world from ‘outdated’ email - Times of India

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US News: NEW YORK: Despite the reasonable qualms of older generations, Generation Z — generally defined as people born between 1997 and 2012 — is pioneering th.

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A new study by Gallup (2020) on behalf of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy finds that low levels of adult literacy could be costing the U.S. as much $2.2 trillion a year.

According to the U.S. Department of Education (2020), 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

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The Rainbow Book List is a curated biography released every year that compiles LGBTQ+ books for youth ages 0-18. It's organized by age, so you can easily find picture books to incorporate into storytime to make your storytimes more diverse!

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The following 58 titles were under consideration by the Rainbow List Committee during the month of October:

America, vol 1: The Life and Times of America Chavez by Gabby Rivera

America, vol 2: Fast and Fuertona by Gabby Rivera

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibia Obono

Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp

Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore

Burro Hills by Julia Lynn Rubin

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Dark Beneath the Ice by Amelinda Bérubé

DeadEndia: The Watcher's Test (Book 1) by Hamish Steele

Dead Weight by Terry Blas & Molly Muldoon

Furyborn by Claire Legrand

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Goldie Vance vol. 3 by Hope Larson

Goldie Vance vol. 4 by Hope Larson

The Handsome Girl and Beautiful Boy by B.T. Gottfried

Heart Foreger by Rin Chupeco

Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin

Here to Stay by Sara Farizan

Hocus Pocus and the All New Sequel by A.W. Jantha

I Felt a Funeral in My Brain by Will Walton

Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst

Jack of Hearts and Other Parts by L.C. Rosen

Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story by Sonia Patel

The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls by Jessica Spotswood

Like Vanessa by Tami Charles

A Line in the Dark by Malinda Lo

Love & Other Carnivorous Plants by Florence Gonsalves

Luisa - Now and Then by Carole Maurel and Mariko Tamaki

Lumberjanes Bonus Tracks by Holly Black

Mariam Sharma Hits the Road by Sheba Karim

Modern HERstory: Stories of women and nonbinary people writing history by Blair Imani

My Life as a Diamond by Jenny Manzer

Nate Expectations by Blair Imani

Odd One Out by Nic Stone

P.S. I Miss You by Jen Petro-Roy

People Like Us by Dana Mele

Pride Guide: A guide to Sexual and Social Health for LGBTQ Youth by Jo Langford

Pros of Cons by Alison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar and Michelle Schusterman

Prom to Remember by Sandy Hall

Pulp by Robin Talley

Quiver by Julia Watts

Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glenn Marsh

The Rules and Regulations of Mediating Myths and Magic by F.T. Lukens

Runaways Vol. 1 Find Your Way Home by Rainbow Rowell

Runaways Vol 2 Best Friends Forever by Rainbow Rowell

Secret Loves of Geeks ed. by Hope Hicholson

Starless by Jacqueline Carey

Summer of Us by Cecilia Vinesse

SuperMoon by H.A. Swain

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E. K. Johnston

They She He Me: Free To Be by Maya + Matthew

This is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender

Tiger's Watch by Julia Ember

Top Ten by Katie Cotugno

Trans Teen Survival Guide by Fox and Owl Fisher

What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

When Lights Left us by Leah Thomas

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The following 58 titles were under consideration by the Rainbow List Committee during the month of October: America, vol 1: The Life and Times of America Chavez by Gabby Rivera America, vol 2: Fast and Fuertona by Gabby Rivera La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibia Obono Before I Let Go by

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Grimes, N. (2021). Real Men Read–A library led reading initiative program. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 1-14.

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Real Men Read peer-reviewed article 03-21

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https://guides.wpunj.edu/RealMenRead

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Laura Beals D'Elia is the Library Teacher at the Armstrong Elementary School in Westborough, MA. She has been an elementary library teacher since 2002. She has a BA in English and Children's Literature from Framingham State University and a MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has presented at various state and national conferences on such topics as 1:1 iPads in an elementary school library and technology program, digital storytelling, and guided inquiry. She presented an EdTalk on "Razing Readers'' at the MTA Summer Conference in 2013. She was also a co-organizer of Edcamp Boston for seven years, the Massachusetts School Library Association's Professional Learning Committee Co-Chair for two years, and a recipient of the 2017 MSLA Service Award. She was honored to represent AASL at the Sharjah International Library Conference in the United Arab Emirates in the fall of 2019. Her most recent professional undertaking is as an Advisory Council member for the Diverse BookFinder.
In 2018, School Library Journal released the results of its diversity survey and confirmed that 81% of school librarians surveyed felt that it was "very important to have a book collection representing different points of view." Since then, many school librarians have gone through the process of auditing their collections. Some used tools like the Diverse BookFinder's Collection Analysis Tool (CAT) to analyze their picture books while some went through the arduous process of auditing their entire collection by hand. Now that they have the results of their audits, I am beginning to see my colleagues ask the tough question, "What does a diverse collection look like?"

photo by Laura Beals D'Elia

The Definition of Diverse
I would like to clarify that when we use the word "diverse," we must use it to describe the collection and not individual titles. Oxford Languages defines "diverse" as " showing a great deal of variety;" therefore it is not accurate to describe a single item as diverse. It is incorrect when we say, "We should include this book in our collection because it is diverse." What we mean to say is that that title includes characters and/or topics that fill a hole in our collections and will help it to become more diverse by way of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, family types, etc.
How Much Should Be Diverse?
A common question I see online is, "How much of my collection should be diverse?" School librarians are amazing educators and although I know this question is asked with the absolute best intention, I feel that the question is not the right question.

For instance, many responses to this question look like this: "If 13% of your student population is Black, then 13% of your collection should have Black characters." This response assumes that a diverse collection should statistically match a school's population. So, if the school population is not diverse then your collection never will be (and whose school population is truly diverse?) With this thinking, schools that have no Native American students will not need to include Native American titles? That's not right. That thinking means that all of your non-Native American students are missing out on a window opportunity.
A diverse collection should be balanced in all areas of diversity regardless of student population. The question we should be asking is, "How do I create a collection that is diverse and balanced?"

photo by Laura Beals D'Elia

If My Collection Were Only 100 Books
To further my point about a balanced collection, let's look at the statistics from the review of my own picture book collection. I used the CAT, including only the titles from my "E" Everybody picture books neighborhood, which represents 1253 titles. To keep it simple, I did not include nonfiction picture books nor picture book biographies. Though there are many other entry points that we can analyze, I will look only at race/culture here. Again, to keep it simple.

Mirroring the "If the World Were Only 100 People" model and using the categories found in the CAT, here is what my picture book collection looks like if it were only 100 books:

*The Collection Analysis Tool does not analyze titles with white or nonhuman characters so I used the percentages represented in the 2018 "Diversity in Children's Books" by The Cooperative Children's Book Center to fill in those gaps.

In this collection, a white child has a 50% chance of finding a mirror book and a 24% chance of finding a window book. A Black child has an 8% chance of finding a mirror book and a 66% chance of finding a window book. This is not a balanced collection and does not provide equal opportunities for my students.
Instead of focusing on matching your percentages with your student population (which changes from year to year), I recommend you find a balance based on the number of books in your collection.
Imagine if my picture book collection looked like this:
The Importance of Mirrors AND Windows
We agree that providing opportunities for students to find mirrors and windows in our collections is important. What I am worrying about is that in this goal of making sure all of our BIPOC students can find mirrors in our collections, we are neglecting the just-as-important need for our white students to find windows. In a truly diverse collection, a collection that is balanced, it will not matter if the percentage of Black titles matches the percentage of Black students. What will matter is if one Black child has the same opportunity of finding a mirror book as one white child does.

Just as important, and I cannot stress this enough, is that our collections must provide our white students more opportunities of finding windows books than mirrors. If we truly agree that providing windows books for white students is one of the most effective ways to encourage empathy and develop unbiased attitudes, then having a collection whose majority of books include white characters (regardless of percentage of white students in your population) is not achieving that objective.
So What Do I Do Now?
Here are my recommendations for your next steps towards achieving a diverse and balanced collection:

1. Audit your collection: Instead of tackling your whole collection at once, start with one section. If you have a picture book collection, use the Diverse BookFinder's CAT to generate your report. Then, you'll have a better grasp on how to move forward with the rest of your collection.

2. Look at the Who and the How: In addition to analyzing your collection for race, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, etc. also consider using the Diverse BookFinder's Categories to make sure that your collection represents various experiences. If you use the CAT, it will include these categories in your analysis. Not all of your books with Black/African American/African characters should be about slavery or civil rights. Remember Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's warning about The Danger of a Single Story and strive for diversity in the "who" as well as the "how."

3. Weed and Declutter: One of the fastest ways that you can increase the balance of your collection is to decrease the number of titles with white and nonhuman characters. Keep the books of merit, the popular titles, and the titles used by classroom teachers (while continuing to encourage them to include more representative titles in their lessons). Take a close look at how many of those titles are actually getting checked out on a regular basis and then weed them! When you declutter the collection you will make it easier for all of your students to find those mirror and window books while at the same time increasing the percentage of nonwhite titles.

4. Purchasing Standards: I have to admit when I started this journey of creating a more diverse collection a few years back, I was very choosy about what I purchased. Dare I say even a bit snobbish. It was easy to be that way because there were so many titles with white characters from which to choose. If a white character title didn't receive raving accolades, it was not going into my collection.
Unfortunately, I applied those same standards when purchasing non-white character titles and I now realize that that mindset created an obstacle towards building a diverse collection. When your choices are so few, you can't apply the same standards.
I still follow my acquisitions policy and make sure I am not purchasing poorly-reviewed or problematic titles but I have allowed myself to be okay with purchasing titles that are okay to pretty good. In other words, it is more important to put as many good books as I can into my students' hands than to make sure that every book is great. Honestly, there are many white-character titles in our collections right now that are just okay according to our librarian standards, yet our students love them.

By changing our focus away from the percentage of student population as a measure of a diverse collection to an overall balance of representation, we can build truly diverse collections that have great benefit for every student in our buildings. So the next time our colleagues ask, "How much of my collection should be diverse?," our answer should be, "All of it."

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What Does a Diverse Collection Look Like? - Diverse BookFinder

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Laura Beals D'Elia is the Library Teacher at the Armstrong Elementary School in Westborough, MA. She has been an elementary library teacher since 2002. She has a BA in English and Children's Literature from Framingham State University and a MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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I Can Make a Difference Manual: Booklist- Finkelstein Memorial Library

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WPUNJ Information Equity Conference Grimes 2022.pptx

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LLNJ TBBC - Reading is for Everyone.pptx

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NJSL Talking Book & Braille Center -https://www.njstatelib.org/talking-book-braille-center/

TBBC Application -https://www.njstatelib.org/talking-book-braille-center/apply_for_service/

NLS Home page -https://www.loc.gov/nls/

NLS BARD -https://nlsbard.loc.gov

Large Print at TBBC -https://www.njstatelib.org/talking-book-braille-center/youth_services/large-print-books/

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Elizabeth Burns, Head of Reader Services

eburns@njstatelib.org

800-792-8322 ext 804

Jennifer Apgar, Youth Services Librarian

japgar@njstatelib.org

800-792-8322 ext 823

Stephen Felle, Outreach Librarian

sfelle@njstatelib.org

800-792-8322 ext 812

Reader Services

tbbc@njstatelib.org

800-792-8322 ext 861