Access to Books, Considering All Populations

Lesesne, Teri S. (2006). Naked Reading. Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Lesesne's chapter 4 "How Can We Energize Tweens? T-A-R-G-E-T: Six Ways for Teachers to Reconnect Kids to Books" provides useful suggestions for teachers and teacher-librarians to draw readers back to reading. These ideas can also be used to entice a nonreader to read. The TARGET acronym is a handy reference. Lesesne suggests building trust ("T") with students by getting to know them. This can be done through interest surveys and checklists to gather information on interests, attitudes, and reading habits; surveys should be given in a brief format to increase the likelihood of responses. Having experience with administering surveys, short and quick is very effective; I've used index cards with one or two questions to answer and surveymonkey.com with less than 8 questions. Also, in the area of trust, she recommends that you do not suggest books to students that will address their current problem, for "bibliotherapy", or make every book a lesson, both can be discouraging to the student.

A is for access, which reminds us that it is essential that students have access to books at all times. There's research showing the relationship between access to books and students' academic achievement: Stephen D. Krashen's "Access to Books is the First Step" and Science Daily's "Books in Home..." . Reading materials should be provided in a variety of formats, with varying levels of text and content complexity, in an array of fiction and nonfiction genres, with appealing covers and titles, of different lengths. Also, having books that appeal across generations is helpful for transgenerational reading.

Teachers and librarians need to be enthusiastic about reading and provide different venues for reading, for free and structured reading times. I worked with a teacher who would have reading and writing cafes, where students were able to have a drink, stretch out around the room and read or write freely. It was a wonderful and the students enjoyed it.

The TARGET approaches are applicable to use with nonreaders and readers alike. They also provide a useful approach for reaching out to many different people in the community, including individuals who may not be well represented in a given community (i.e., LGBTQ, homeless, foster youth, disabled, specific ethnic or cultural groups, etc.). Articles such as "Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways", "Partnership with health department has directed more than 150 people to social services" , and "Coming Out in Middle School" show us some of these groups. A review of community profiles is another way to gather information about community members. The American Community Survey of the US Census is one place to review such data, as well as school profiles posted by districts and state departments of education.