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Think you haven't? Sure you have!
Evidence-Based Practice
OLA’s White Pine Reading Program
This was a collaborative project between Janina Wright, teacher-librarian, and Cindi Olsen, literacy teacher, and Waterloo Collegiate Institute in the Waterloo Region DSB. Students from the school’s OLC 401 literacy class were invited to participate in the Ontario Library Association’s White Pine reading program. Participating students met with the teacher-librarian twice weekly, who used specific literacy strategies to facilitate discussion and foster insight into the books. The students set their own reading goals, and kept reading logs. At the end of the program, students attended the OLA’s White Pine celebration, and got to meet and question the books’ authors.
A course expectation in OLC 401 is for students to read a variety of texts, making connections between texts and personal experience. The White Pine reading group gave students an opportunity to practise oral literacy skills to construct meaning and understanding of written texts, motivated by the element of choice in reading materials.
Students’ written responses “counted” towards their course reading log. Students gave written feedback on the program. The literacy teacher also gave written feedback. The reading group’s final discussion was video-taped. During editing, captions were added to point out how the discussion was fulfilling literacy expectations from Think Literacy: Cross-Curricular Approaches. Students were motivated by the element of choice in reading materials, and consequently read far more than they agreed they otherwise would have.
The program was so successful that the literacy teacher is committed to repeating it again this year.
The program and the evidence collected have been shared with teacher-librarians and literacy teachers across the district. Many schools have expressed interest in trying it at their own schools. The district’s Success for All (Think Literacy) program staff are promoting the idea.