Supercharging Your Storytimes

Six-week Course | October 7 - November 17, 2024

Using your knowledge of early literacy skills and practices based on Every Child Ready to Read®, supercharge your storytimes! Interactivity with children and their parents/caregivers, and intentionality, being purposeful in connecting storytime books and experiences, support early literacy behaviors. Assessment through self-reflection and peer sharing, along with hands-on practice developing and delivering early literacy tips to adults in storytimes, will provide you with the opportunity to energize your storytimes while becoming an advocate for early literacy in your library and community.

PLEASE NOTE: This class does not cover how to plan and present storytimes. It is focused on incorporating early literacy information/asides into your storytimes.

Required Text: Storytimes for Everyone. You may purchase a personal copy from the ALA Store, or use a copy your library owns as long as you have access to it for the full four week class.

Learning Objectives: Participants will

• Describe and execute ways to share storytime books and activities in ways that support the early literacy components
• Transform your own traditional storytimes into early literacy enhanced storytimes
• Convey early literacy information and activities to parents/caregivers in the storytime setting
• Examine and implement storytime assessment tools
• Articulate the importance library services in terms of early literacy programs

Expectations: This class consists of six weeks of content. There WILL be homework during the fourth week which will be due by the end of the fifth week. Although there are individual differences, you may expect each week to take 3 – 4 hours of work which includes the readings, watching the presentations and homework assignments.

Presenter: Pamela Martin-Díaz is an Early Childhood Literacy Consultant whose workshops are shaped by decades of experience as a children’s librarian and branch manager. She is currently working with Head Start in rural Ohio on a project to expand and deepen the impact of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Her workshops are framed by her belief that librarians can help improve young children’s educational outcomes by influencing and inspiring the adults in young children’s lives to share books with them interactively, intentionally and with joy. Pamela is co-author with Saroj Ghoting of Early Literacy Storytimes@your library: Partnering with Caregivers for Success, ALA Editions, Chicago, IL 2006 and Storytimes for Everyone! Developing Young Children’s Language and Literacy, ALA Editions, 2013. She has a MA in Library Science from the University of Chicago.

CALL Training Partner for this Event: Library Juice Academy