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| Kids enjoy scarves at a Bloomer storytime |
You may have already heard that the G.E. Bleskacek Memorial Library in Bloomer won a Standing Up for Rural Schools, Libraries and Communities Award, along with their partner, the Bloomer Area School District. They won the award for an outstanding collaboration between the library and the early childhood speech and language pathologists. Here’s what Kathy says:
I initially met with the superintendent and two other district staff members to talk about how the school and library could work together to reach common goals. One of the recommendations that came out of it was this joint storytime.
Meggan Bixby and Lynn Hammond are the Speech and Language Pathologists who help plan out our sounds and themes for the fall and spring. Either Meggan and Lynn or both are at each storytime during the school year. They meet with their students individually before or after storytime.
My goal is covering the five practices, their goal is to have their students with speech IEP’s interact with kids who do not have speech IEP’s and at the same time introduce them to the public library in the hopes that their families will use our services and materials.
Our storytime structure is:
· Introduction to sound of the day
· Welcome Song
· Speech teacher’s introduce sound to kids and parents. Give hints about correct pronunciation and how parents can work on the correct sounds with their children.
· Book
· Song
· Book
· Song
· The sound bag is a game in which children try to guess what is in the bag by clues the teacher gives them, a fun phonological awareness game (speech and early literacy are such a great combination).
· Book
· Craft at the table
· Playtime
· Hand out Homework- It is a double sided sheet. I supply the literacy side, the teachers supply the back sound of the day blurb. Here’s an example of one.