Utah State Library Youth Services

Teen Tech Week sponsored by YALSA is three weeks away, March 6-12! This year’s theme is Mix and Mash @ your Library. What activities do you have planned? Visit the Teen Tech Week website for some great programming ideas.

Your teens can participate in this year’s You Are Here Teen Video Challenge. The Collaborative Summer Library Program and the Utah State Library have created this opportunity for teens to create 30-90 second video promoting the teen summer reading program theme “You Are Here.” The winning video will receive $250 (and $100 to the winner’s library)!

Check out StoryBlocks.org, a website put together by Colorado Libraries and their PBS affiliates. Librarians show how to integrate early literacy techniques into storytime or at-home time. Each video is one-minute, and there are a number of bilingual videos.

The American Library Association will be releasing updated information about Every Child Ready to Read in the upcoming weeks and I thought it would be great to review Early Literacy skills before the new information is released.

There are six main Early Literacy skills that librarians can help parents develop to ensure a child’s success in reading: Print Motivation, Vocabulary, Print Awareness, Narrative Skills, Letter Knowledge, and Phonological Awareness. Today, more about…

Phonological Awareness: The ability to hear and play with the smaller parts that make up words. This helps children learn to sound out words as they begin to read.

In storytime, you could talk about how each syllable of a song usually gets its own beat.  Clapping along with the syllables in a song helps children develop an ear for the smaller sounds in words, which makes it easier when it’s time to learn to read.

I’ve received a number of inquiries about the Early Literacy Station offered by AWE. I’ve been in touch with their rep, Melissa Congdon, and she’s let me know that they are available at a reduced rate in February 2011. For the rest of the month, the English station, with 45 software titles, 19″ touch-screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer is available for $2,150. The Bilingual English/Spanish version has 31 titles and costs $2,250. Please contact Matt McLain at the State Library, (801) 715-6742, for more information.