Multicultural books...

So I was already on a journey to find more French immersion First Nations content for our school library when I heard this moving presentation about how everyone benefits when they can find themselves represented in stories.  Here is Chimananda Adichie talking about the danger of a single story. 

This video encouraged me to look for stories of other cultures (in today's times) that students in French immersion would read.  For primary books the images are important to show students, that people of their heritage are in books too.  For intermediate stories I wanted to find both immigration stories but also stories of children and teens in current situations that students in my school can relate to.
Well I found this quest really challenging.  So if you have any more suggestions I would really appreciate them!

Here is the few that I have found so far:

Primary:

• AMÉ by  Massicotte, Sylvie (3 books in this series) (African) ISBN 9782896512096 
•  Emma by Nelson, Sandra  (2 books in this series) isbn 9782081253896
• Comme elle ressemble à mon papa par Pili Mandelbaum (an adopted daughter from another country) ISBN 978221101091

• Another title is Tutti frutti in the " À pas de souris" series .
• There are some titles in the Scholastic  "Je veux lire" series like Le nouveau bébé.  And more titles in the new series "toujours parfait".
•  Huit Jours: un enfant À HAÏTI  by Danticat, Edwidge.  ISBN 9781443106740 (Amerique du Sud)
• Le kimono du Suki  ISBN ) 0439975077 (Japanese)

  

Intermediate: (still looking hard for books)

• Ping  by Poulin, ANDRÉE (2 titles - an adopted Chinese child in a regular family in Quebec.  Well written). 
• Qu'est-ce qui fait courir Mamadi? par  Étienne Poirier (African child in a refugee campt) ISBN 9782924279045

My library year in an infographic!

After talking with librarians in my School District, I realized that I wanted to advertise our amazing library activities to my teachers, parents and students.  I have changed from my standard report that doesn't get circulated farther than our school and library principals to an infographic. I think busy teachers and parents may actually read this short snapshot of our year but definitely would not crack the covers of a formal report.  Here it is:

My library clerk and I chose the activities and events we were most proud.  After completion, I realized I missed other events- like our January reading challenge, Red Cedar Competition, and our Library Club, that also contributed to a reading climate in our school. So next year I will create a running list, that I can update bimonthly, so I can make a final selection for an infographic.

 

I used the colours from our school banner to provide a cohesive feeling.  However in future I would also select images of a similar style, or draw them to make the infographic feel like a professional publication.   This may be solved by using a program designed to make infographics.

 

However, in the short time I had to complete this project I am pleased with this result.

 

French ONLY graphic novels for french immersion (bandes dessinées)

Like many elementary students, French immersion students enjoy reading bandes dessinées.  So a strategy I am trying in my library is to buy some of the series ONLY in French.  This makes students who are weaker readers, or those that prefer bandes dessinées to read in French.  The intent is to support the school's goal of French immersion through practice in French and development of French vocabulary.

My school is a single track school, so using this strategy I have bought some graphic novel series only in French.
The following list includes a few newer series that I have found that currently are in French only and not English:

L'agent Jean! (Alex, A.) Fun story about a "Moose" who is a spy, immersion grades 4-6.

Series Geo - (Beka) 3 titles, explores parts of the world in stories, immersion grades 6-7
Leon, (Groovie A.)  story of a goofy Cyclops and his friends. grades 5-9.
Monster Allergy (Centomo, Artiani, Nardo, translated from Italian),  a boy who is allergic to monsters, immersion grades 6-9.
Non-fiction animal series (Massa, R.) e.g.  les reptiles, les amphibiens (more titles) non-fiction series on animal families, grades 5-7.

The classics (French):

•  Barbapapa (Tison, A) Colourful blobs that have adventures and learn about things, grades 2-3. (French only I think)
• Tintin, (Herge) adventures of a boy sleuth and his dog, in most languages, grades 4-10, (avoid the racist first one in this series)
• Asterix,  (Goscinny, R.) adventures of 3 Gaul's, in times of Roman conquest, grades 5 - 10
• Lou  (Neel, J.) story of a girl who's mother is a "hippie" writer and she has a younger brother,  grades 5-7
• Lucky Luke (Morris or Goscinny) cowboy adventures,  grade 4-7

I have also bought the following graphic novels only in French: Amulet, Sardine, and Nate.   (If students really want to read these books in English they can borrow them from the public library.)  I have an advantage since I am in a newer school, and I do not have a large English graphic novel collection, so I have been able to buy series in French that my school doesn't have in English. The challenge is when new graphic novel series come out, e.g.  Raven Tales (Kientz, C.), Smile (Telgemeier, R.) and Squish (Holm, J.).  I do not know if or when, they will be translated so I have bought them for my library in English.  I do have some graphic novels  in both English and French.  I think in the longer term, when the English version of a translated series is worn out I will not replace it. 

Tintin et Milou

However if you are a dual track school this strategy of purchasing common graphic novel series in French only, would not serve your school population appropriately.   For dual track schools I suggest you consider purchasing a couple of graphic novels that are only published in French, then your French immersion students have a unique graphic novel series to choose., and it supports development of their french language vocabulary. 

Leave a comment if you have any other suggestions of good French graphic novels for elementary schools.

Technology and other considerations

So my idea was to curate websites. I read an interesting article on content curation that challenged teacher librarians to provide value-added curating rather than just collecting (White 2012).  To add value, a clear list of sorting objectives is required, I used the ones that I had outlined in my vision post (March 9, 2014).

I then looked at different ways to curate these resources, one of my PLN members suggested Jog the Web (2014). Before I started using this resource, I checked online to see what other resources are available for this task.  Well, I found out the list was endless (Ragan2013) and many tools seemed to be more for aggregation of personally selected information, for example of Twitter, newsfeeds, etc. rather than curation of content in a more traditional library sense.  Some, like Pearltrees, seemed to just collect the website link, visually, but not allow for commentary; or at least the examples I looked at.

So I started entering my data in my old standby Excel spreadsheet, and then I transferred it into Jog the Web.  It definitely was more time consuming to have 2 steps, but the advantage of the columns in Excel was it clearly allowed me to list my selection criteria (oral instructions, grade levels, content, cost, etc) and thus reminded me to evaluate each resource for all these features.  It also helped when I moved the information into Jog the Web, as I had clarified my summary format in my mind, and settled on recommended and not recommended.  I also had a clearer idea of the variety of websites and realized that sites which had only some features that I was looking for I did not need to recommend since there were many better websites.  Then I found out that Jog the Web has to create second pages after 20 items are entered, making the process more cumbersome. Also my limited bandwidth made the saving of information slow.  A good feature is that I could order my best choices at the top with the ordering tool on Job the Web

Next I tried Aaron’s suggestion of Delicious, to see if I could speed up the entry process.  And now I am back to tagging, which isn’t the kind of sorting I wanted, but I could definitely add a tag for recommended or not recommended.  My intention was to create a short list for my teachers to review and put selected ones on my school website.  I wanted the complete list so I knew if I had already rated the website.  However when I share my Delicious links I would have to tell the evaluating teachers that they need to sort the links by the recommended tag, a bit fussy when I am asking for help.  So on Delicious I just put the short list.  However, I must have been tired when trying to share Delicious as it appeared I could only share it with Delicious members.  So to actually send the project out for some feedback I sent it out with the easy to find hyperlink in Jog the Web version which has the preferred websites listed as the top 16.

So my challenge will be to get feedback, even if I had started earlier it wouldn’t be much different since my school was on a 2 week spring break.  I will wait a couple of days and if nothing comes I will share my recommended list with the class and have our school website designer add them all to our school website, which is sorted into primary/intermediate.  Thanks to Jane, I do have some valuable feedback. 

References:

Delicious. Retrieved April 2, 2014 from https://delicious.com/
Jog the web. March 31, 2014. http://www.jogtheweb.com/
Ragan. 2013. 15 top –notch content curation tools.  Retrieved March 31, 2014 from http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/15_topnotch_content_curation_tools_15378.aspx
White, Nancy. July 2012.   Understanding content curation.  Reviewed March 30, 2014 on http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/07/07/understanding-content-curation/

 

Project to compliment my vision of teacher-librarianship

A large part of my job involves identifying and promoting French language resources that support exploration and learning appropriate for an elementary school.  This includes both physical resources but increasingly online resources and programs that can be used to promote French language learning and engage students in learning.  I still anticipate that a large part of my job will be managing physical resources, especially in an elementary school where being able to see and pick up a book allows a child to identify areas that might be interesting to them.  I don’t think this part of the job will disappear. Another part of the management of physical resources that will become busier is lending digital cameras, video cameras, laptops, and other technology devices which will allow students to create and utilize digital media.  However, I think it is becoming increasingly important to be able to connect teachers and students to reputable online French language resources. I foresee, identifying and promoting online resources becoming a larger part of my job.  I think by considering what the teachers and students want to access, my focus is on “all the things we librarians bring to the mission of our institutions”... rather than “worrying about the future of the library” (T Scott. 2012).  By providing services that help the teachers and students in my school, I create a future for my library.

 

To contribute to this goal one of the things I would like to do is curate educational French websites for students in the K-2 grade level. I identified curating websites as important task in my original post for this course (Beaudry 2014).  I have a couple of teachers in my school plus a third teacher in another French immersion school in my School District interested in K-1 student websites.  These teachers would like to have opportunities in their “computer time” to not only promote technology skills, but also French language learning.  So my topic is aggregation and curation of French language digital sources for young primary students.  Aggregation, curation and reference are basic library “functions that will probably continue to be needed, even in a digital world where all content is electronic.  … In fact … these functions are more critical than ever.” (Coffman 2013)

I plan to seek out online digital resources through my teachers, members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and web searches.  I will evaluate any identified resources, since curation includes the evaluation of resources before sharing. I will compare website content to the PLO's for these primary grades.  I will consider language ability of these immersion students.   For websites that meet these initial criteria, I will then share them with my small group of interested teachers to collect their opinions on website appropriateness.  If there is time I will see what the students think of the sites. The final set of selected websites would then either be purchased and/or linked on our Learning Commons webpage (insert link) with clickable links to make it easy for students to access them.

I have some experience already purchasing licenses for online French language resources.  I bought my staff a year’s subscription to a teacher resources website "Le jardin de Vicky”.  Purchases of online sites show a “library investing in learning environments … by purchasing the ability for (a teacher) to provide the experience she wants her students to have.” (Mathews 2013)

My final project will either be a database of the links that I can have our school website developer add to the school webpage, or I myself will add these to the school webpage.  The school webpage has recently been moved to Weebly.  The advantage of our school webpage is that it is easily available by other students in our District and beyond.  Therefore the final project will be shared with my larger teacher-librarian community.  The database will include rationale of why a site was selected or rejected, annual costs, hyperlink, subject area and grade level (K-2 range).  The database can also be published on this blog for the larger teacher-librarian community.

In the future, if these sites are received positively I will consider curating other French language resources for elementary grades.  As said by a UBC librarian “What will distinguish libraries in the future is not what we electronically license, but what we have in our collections that we make available to the world,” (Bates, 2012)  

References:
LeFurgy, Bill.  Oct 12, 2014.  Digital preservation: a role for public libraries.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://agogified.com/tag/libraries. (image)

Beaudry, Leisbet.  Jan. 12, 2014.  Personal Interests and Issues in Educational Technology.  http://beaudrylibrary.blogspot.ca/2014/01/personal-interests-and-issues-in.html

Bates, Andrew, 2014.  Turning a Page: the changing role of the university library.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://ubyssey.ca/features/turning-a-page-the-changing-role-of-the-university-library/

Coffman, Steve.  Jan/Feb 2013.  So now what?: The future for librarians.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://www.infotoday.com/OnlineSearcher/Articles/Features/So-Now-What-The-Future-for-Librarians-86856.shtml

le jardin de Vicky, 2005-2011. http://jardindevicky.ca/

Mathews, Brian.  2013.  Curating learning experiences: a future role for librarians?.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2013/09/05/curating-learning-experiences-a-future-role-for-librarians/

Scott, Tl 2012.  Comment on blog post “The future of libraries is”.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://librarian.newjackalmanac.ca/2012/11/the-future-of-libraries-is.html

Teach Thought Staff. 2013.  8 ways the librarian of the future will keep themselves busy.  Retrieved March 9, 2014 from http://www.teachthought.com/literacy-2/8-ways-the-librarian-of-the-future-will-keep-themselves-busy/ (image)

Sources for reviews of French language resources

 

This is my second year working as a teacher-librarian in a single track French Immersion school.  I have located some good resources for reviews of French language books.  However it is important to recognize that most of these resources are for French language speakers.  In a French immersion school you need books that provide “High-Low” reading, so I scale down the recommendations by a couple of years.  Also I find that books from Québécois(e) writers tend to use vocabulary that is similar to what is being taught in French immersion classrooms; while children’s books from France often use a broader vocabulary.  The broader vocabulary can make the books harder for immersion students to read.  A final piece of advice is to choose primary books that have limited text, since most families with students in French immersion cannot read the primary texts that are “read alouds”. Focus on just buying the most highly recommended read alouds for your teachers.  

My first “go-to” source is Catalogue Nelligan http://nelligan.ville.montreal.qc.ca/search*frc.  The children’s librarian for the La Ville de Québec shared this site with me.  There is usually a book summary (en français), a book review and a book rating. 

	Book rating			Age range (remember to scale!)
5	excellent		M	Preschool and kindergarten
4	very good		E	8 to 9 years
3	good		E+	Primary, 6 to 9 years
2	not recommended		E++	Intermediate, 9 to 12 years
D	to be determined		J+	12 to 15 years
			J	12 to 17 years
			J++	15 to 17 years

 

My second “go-to” site is the Québec Ministry of Education website Livres ouvert http://www.livresouverts.qc.ca/.  This is a site that reviews books by grade level and subject area.  They have a scale for French immersion students too.  Just like any catalogue you can search by topic, title, author, but also by grade level by both first and second language speakers!

Some of my other sources include:

·         Another useful site is Ricochet, http://www.ricochet-jeunes.org/sommaire, an independent Swiss website that reviews French language children’s’ literature.  The focus of this non-profit site is to promote reading and media for children.  Often if I cannot find a review on Catalogue Nelligan, I use this site to get an opinion on a book.  The original reviewers had a professional background.  This site is also designed for French as a first language.  Remember Switzerland has 4 official languages; French is just one of them. 

 

·         Lurelu, a Québécoise magazine all about childrens’ literature http://www.lurelu.net/coupsdecoeur.html. This link takes you directly to their “coups de cœur" or favorites.  This is the list I like the best, however I find they select many read aloud books so be careful with this list for an immersion school library.  Some are amazing suggestions for example: automne 2007 Simard, D. La petite rapporteuse de mots which is a lovely story to teach empathy, word choice and grandparents, for grade 3-5 immersion.

 

·         BnF, the National Center of Children’s Literature, of the National Library of France, promotes quality children’s literature. On the site there is a list of 3000 books sorted by category that they recommend for a children’s library http://lajoieparleslivres.bnf.fr/clientBookline/toolkit/p_requests/formulaire.asp?GRILLE=BITOUSAVANCEE%5F0&INSTANCE=JOIE&SYNCHROID=BIB_IDEALE&PORTAL_ID=JPL_BI_Tous.xml; but they do not give an age range for their books.  There are links to organization that give literature prizes for children’s literature http://lajoieparleslivres.bnf.fr./masc/portal.asp?INSTANCE=JOIE&PORTAL_ID=HTML.xml&URL=Integration/JOIE/statique/pages/15_bib_num/151_ressources_docs/ressources_docs_som.htm  and magazines that review children’s literature. (Quentin Blake)

     Critiques Libres is like the website Goodreads where the members provide book reviews.  Here is the link to reviews of children’s books http://www.critiqueslibres.com/i.php/vcat/502.  If you have a favorite French book, see who gives it a good rating on this site and then use these contributors as like-minded book reviewers, whose opinion you can respect.

 

Other sources of recommended children’s books are Awards and Prizes:

     Communication-Jeunesse, a site all about Québécoise and French-Canadian literature for children http://www.communication-jeunesse.qc.ca/selection/nouveautes/index.php. This site has children’s choice awards “Palmarès” by year which is their best list.  They recommend books as well, however they select about half the books submitted to them so use this list with a large “grain of salt”.

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre which provides the TD prize for children’s literature in French.  This is a Canadian non-profit organization the promotes reading. http://www.bookcentre.ca/awards/le_prix_td_de_litterature_canadienne_pour_lenfance_et_la_jeunesse

There is also the GG’s (Governor General Awards in Children’s Literature) http://ggbooks.canadacouncil.ca/ http://ggbooks.canadacouncil.ca/ which selects a French children’s book and a French picture book from submitted books.  The criteria are for a “Canadian Voice”, so you may not necessarily want these in your library.