In those few moments when a baby relaxes and cuddles in your lap as you read them a book, a wonderful thing is happening—babies learn that books contain words, pictures, and stories that interest them. You can start teaching early literacy skills to babies without them or their grownups even knowing that that’s what you are doing!
Every Child Ready to Read® @ your library® (ECRR) is a parent education initiative. It stresses that early literacy begins with the primary adults in a child's life. The 2nd Edition of Every Child Ready to Read® @ your library®, released in 2011, builds on the 1st Edition, first introduced in 2004. The 2nd Edition incorporates recommendations that evolved out of an in-depth evaluation of the original initiative and an extensive literature review.
Amy Herman, Director of Educational Development at Thirteen/WNET, will demonstrate her methodology of improving observation, perception, and communication skills by learning to analyze works of art using the Picturing America images. In this highly participatory session for librarians, Amy will engage participants in a dialogue about looking at art and how to make Picturing America images accessible to audiences who do not have formal art historical training.
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a structured, widely respected, research-based method of looking at art that enables participants to develop esthetic and language literacy and critical thinking skills. It provides a simple yet powerful technique that librarians can utilize not just in conducting Picturing America discussion programs, but throughout their careers. Join Oren Slozberg, Executive Director of Visual Thinking Strategies, for an introductory overview of VTS using Picturing America images as a basis for discussion.
Join Wendy Lukehart, Youth Collections Coordinator at the District of Columbia Public Library and fellow recipients of the Picturing America collection, to learn more about how the DCPL staff has conducted successful Picturing America programs for children. Wendy will share her experiences using Visual Thinking Strategies and the Whole Book Approach to bring the Picturing America collection to life for young audiences.
Join Lisa Sheffield, Adult Services Librarian at the Transylvania County Library in Brevard, North Carolina, to learn more about hosting a viewing and discussion series for adult audiences. Lisa will share her experiences presenting film-based programs, offering attendees a simple program model, and discussing best practices for scheduling the series, finding and working with a scholar/speaker, setting program and audience goals, promoting the series, facilitating each session, and conducting evaluation.
As informal education institutions, museums and libraries share similar missions and values and can benefit from forging partnerships. Benefits include resource sharing, outreach to new audiences, access to expertise and the potential for increasing goodwill and support between the organizations and the broader community. Participants will learn about a number of successful museum/library partnerships that are generating innovative programming, exhibits and creating new opportunities for outreach and how to identify potential partners and successfully manage joint projects.
Great resource with text outlining how to effectively conduct a public partnership and defining the elements of a successful partnership.
Includes a "Partnership Worksheet" which is a tool that can be used to help each organization developing partnerships discuss issues internally with their own staff and externally with partnering staff. Organizations will find that some questions should be answered independently of one another and others will require collaborative consensus. Partners’ combined responses will
set appropriate expectations for each organization.
The Museums, Libraries, and 21st Century Skills Online Self-Assessment. This interactive survey for library and museum professionals provides a quick way to scan your institution's approach to enhancing the 21st century skills of your audiences.
The Online Self-Assessment contains 17 questions and displays, upon completion, a set of results and recommendations.
In this free podacst, Marsha L. Semmel, Acting Director, IMLS explains:
What are 21st century skills?
Where did the 21st century skills movement come from?
Where do museums and libraries fit in the 21st century skills movement?
Listen to the podcast and download a PDF of the transcript.
