Suitable Geography Books for school libraries.

About one and half weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with a student undertaking the Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship) Degree who is currently employed at a school that I work for. We have had some discussions about the coursework as they are in the early stages of their study, and were keen to find out some insights into my experiences ten years ago.

They currently have an assignment that requires them to organise a lesson (or lessons) focusing on inquiry skills and also have to apply relevant pedogogies that have been explored in their coursework. While I'd help them with resources etc or share examples of work that I have done, 

I also investigated suitable resources for the unit of work being covered. It is from the unit Place and Livability in the Stage 4 Geography Course. Students are also undertaking project based learning as part of the unit.

The school library lacks any resources to support the students including books on urban spaces but also referene books such as Almanacs which can provide basic yet useful and accurate statistics for research. I challenged myself as well to locate and recommend suitable books for future acquisition. Many of the items that I located were well above their reading level and would usually be read by adults or those at tertiary level. Even searching for items through Educational Booksellers was also difficult and again, not many items to be found, if not nothing.

It's disappointing that no publishers or authors have stepped up to provide books with factual information that can be used by students for this unit of work that reflects the reading level etc of the students. I hope that I am wrong on this.

My concern though, is that there will be too much reliance on Google for this unit of work. 

Concerns over Reading for Pleasure

Yesterday, The Australian published an overview of the findings from OECD, 21st‑Century Readers: Developing Literacy Skills in a Digital World.

It was concerning for Australia. The research established that increased internet usage was leading to a decrease in students reading for pleasure. 32% of Australian teenagers felt that reading was a "waste of time" and 58% read because "I have to". 

Reading for pleasure has been linked to performance in reading scores. Those who read for pleasure received scores up to 86 points higher than those who dont read. 

With Australia slipping against other OECD countries in reading scores and rankings, this is suggesting that engagement with reading amongst children is on the decline.

The research also identified that teachers contribute towards higher reading scores if students were required to read texts e.g. set text or read one book per fortnight and if the texts contained more than 101 pages. It also encouraged reading for pleasure.

Click here to view the article (You will need to be a subscriber to The Australian) to access the content.