It's that time again - summer is winding down and school is starting up. Check out Kindergarten Readiness and Student Learning, a guide from Ohio Ready to Read for public librarians to learn about concepts in PreK-12 education and to assess, enhance, and promote library programs, collections, and relationships to support student learning.
The Lunch at the Library coalition has created a 14-page how-to guide, Linking Early Learning and Nutrition for Young Children, which helps libraries connect summer feeding programs with services and support for young children and their families. In partnership with Tandem Early Learning, Lunch at the Library also makes available a set of Conversation Starter tabletop tent cards to encourage serve-and-return interactions between caring adults and their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
A variety of high-quality recorded webinars are available to help library staff learn about storytime techniques, early literacy, and other topics in library service to young children and their caring adults. All the webinars gathered here are free and available for on-demand viewing:
https://www.ohreadytoread.org/recorded-webinars
The Schoenbaum Family Center at the Ohio State University will host a Summer Institute on the theme "Achieving Quality: Best Practices in Early Childhood." This one-day conference offers high-quality professional development for early childhood educators, practitioners and administrators who work with young children, specifically those from birth to age five. The Schoenbaum Family Center is reaching out to children's librarians as part of this audience.
The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County presents a new Kindergarten Readiness Workshop with Saroj Ghoting:
“Strengthening School Readiness Support to Families and the Community through the Public Library”
The workshop is funded by an LSTA grant and is open to any Ohio librarian, with attendance at each session limited to 30.
The State Library of Ohio and the Choose to Read Ohio Advisory Council are pleased to announce that The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López, has been selected as the fourth annual Choose to Read Ohio (CTRO) “Floyd’s Pick” title, in memory of children’s literature expert, advocate, and librarian Floyd Dickman.
Ohio Ready to Read presents its FREE hands-on early literacy training workshop! Open to all Ohio public library workers, the next Early Literacy 101 workshops are scheduled:
Boost the early literacy skills of the children who attend your storytimes! This self-paced course is built on research about how young children learn.
Dr. Laura Justice, the director of the Schoenbaum Family Center and Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at the Ohio State University. is facilitating a Literacy for Librarians workshop on Monday, October 29 from 12:30 - 3:00 pm in Columbus.
Ohio Ready to Read trainers are scheduling online Early Literacy 101 workshops during the public health emergency. The next opportunity is coming up in March and registration is open:
School Library Journal maintains a list of publisher permissions for read-aloud use of their books in your online storytimes and programs. This list is updated as new information is received from publishers:
Are you looking for tips, techniques, and best practices for planning and producing online/virtual storytimes? Two recordings from webinars originally presented in summer 2020 are now available for free, anytime viewing via the Self-Paced Online Courses and Recorded Webinars page of the ORTR website! One is from the Ohio Library Council and the other is from WebJunction.
Find more self-paced learning opportunities for early childhood programming: ohreadytoread.org/recorded-webinars
Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR), a national parent/caregiver outreach initiative, empowers public library workers to share early literacy knowledge with the caring adults in young children's lives. It was first rolled out in 2004, and is very familiar to children's services specialists. But what if you're a new children's librarian or specialist and you're hearing about ECRR for the first time? You've come to the right place!
           