More to Know: The Value of Book Floods
Children read 50-60 % more
in classrooms with libraries than they do in classrooms without libraries.
We’ve long known that quality libraries have a positive impact on students’ achievement (McGill-Franzen and Botzakis, 2009; Gallagher, 2009; Constantino, 2008; Atwell and Merkel, 2016; Williams, Wavell, and Coles, 2001; McQuillan, 1998; Elley, 1992). In their article “Productive Sustained Reading in Bilingual Class” (2010), researchers Jo Worthy and Nancy Roser detail the ways in which they flooded a fifth-grade classroom in a diverse, high-poverty school, located in a southwest state, with books (Elley, 2000; Gallagher, 2009). Worthy and Roser spent a year monitoring and documenting the students’ involvement with their new expansive classroom library and the opportunities it provided for sustained reading both in school and at home. The results were impressive: before the “book flood,” only 27 percent of the students had passed the state achievement test as fourth-graders; after the book flood, all but one student passed the test and he missed by just one point. At the International Association of School Librarians Conference held in Auckland, New Zealand, Ross Todd explored the relationship of libraries to academic achievement (2001). A library’s impact is especially noteworthy when it serves as support for students’ inquiry projects. Todd notes the outcomes when students are invited to follow a line of inquiry as they develop their control of information literacy (a key requirement of the new, rigorous standards across the grades). In this environment, students: • Are better able to master content material. • Develop more positive attitudes toward learning.
• Respond more actively to the opportunities in the learning environment. • Are more likely to perceive themselves as active, constructive learners.
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CLASSROOM LIBRARIES
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