Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted learners and the library

I am a past gifted teacher, now classroom teacher (due to budget cuts). I'm working on another Masters degree, this time in Education Technology and Library Science. I'm wondering how you have seen the library be a support for your gifted learners/children. I want to be able to provide enrichment opportunities to students when I'm a librarian but I'm not sure how it will work.

I would love to hear about any experiences your children have had with the library and if it's been a supportive place.

Thanks!

This is wonderful. Thanks for writing/asking.

I would recommend ensuring that kids aren't restricted to age/grade-level books. The most common complaint I've heard on this board is that kids and parents get very frustrated when gifted kids aren't allowed to borrow books outside an arbitrary range that has been established for them.

As for enrichment, I'd recommend getting to know the gifties and helping them find books that will benefit them.

That's wonderful! I agree with Val. My DS6 has been restricted from accessing parts of his school library. Our public library has been a huge resource, however, and the librarian and my son have really connected. He learned far more via his public library card than he did in K this year by far.

Are you interested in the use of school libraries, public libraries not located in schools, or both?

Book clubs for the gifted reader (wouldn't have to label it that)....

Some sort of magical app where you input....he's read this this this and this and loves it and he has read all of these off this list and he likes big thick books at least at this level (no dystopia or teen lovey stuff)....print me out a list for what is next. I know good reads and scholastic and amazon have some recommendation features but I need a really good app (or a human) who can do a better job.

Netflix actually did a good job when I was a member because once the recs showed up you could keep clicking...saw that loved it, saw that hated it and they kept recommending.

Right now I just look though the library alphabetically in the fiction section...sometimes I find something he likes and sometimes it is a miss (I volunteer work in the school media center). He doesn't get a lot of time to browse so I help.

An easily searchable online catalogue with the ability to make reservations is the single best feature of our public library.

The local librarians add content-specific tags that are searchable by age/grade level, so that you can search an entry such as "sea stars tide pools", toggle kindergarten level, and get a list of potential titles.

ETA: keeping story time or book clubs ability-linked, not age-linked, is something I wish was more prevalent here.

Our experiences:


Public school: LOVE our librarian. She has always let my girls check out what they wanted once she got to know them. If they had something outside of norm (1st grade shelving restrictions early in the year to acclimate to library-- then you only have to do a short read a loud to her to be able to check out what you want---especially if she knew family and their comfort level with content)- we were allowed to stop after school and check out from anywhere. She always had suggestions and urged them to try something new. I love that she does not like AR/limited reading choices.

** would love if they had a book club and/or peer suggested book activities**

Public library: LOVE our library. Librarians didnt blink an eye at my 5 yr olds asking for something like "name a book" or for specific chapter books. They even offered suggestions and/or greet my kiddos by name after awhile. We have a wonderful library with a massive childrens department and supportive librarians. I do wish now that my kiddos are older (8) that they had the marvelous selection of activities that are available to the younger set (K-2nd grade) like book clubs, an older Elem kid storytime, etc. THey have some programming, but said that age group (8-12) has been one that is hard to get activity on. Lots of family programs though!

The key thing in my mind is making sure you have a good range of appropriate yet challenging books for the gifted reader and making them accessible and obvious. These might be books typically shelved with the adults books. Particularly pay attention to books that aren't the most popular, but are still well written and engaging to people of all ages. These exist but take a bit more work and research to find. Perhaps encourage gifted kids that come through your library to write reviews of these books to be posted along a display.

I agree with everyone that is saying to allow the gifted readers to take out books at their level in the school library. What I saw a lot of in K and 1 especially is that the librarian would put out a bunch of grade level books on a table and only allow the children to choose from that table, instead of the whole library. I'm sure that made it easier for them, but my child who was reading 3 levels above would come home with a picture book that was read for 2 minutes and then was done with it.

The current librarian knows my child and abilities and makes a point to suggest higher level books.

What I appreciate about our local library is that they have no minimum age for a library card and no limit to how many books you can take out. The volunteers at the desk seem to "know" about advanced readers.

We use the public library's online feature exclusively - once we search for a book or keyword, there are links to other similar books and reviews and recommendations and categories. We hardly interact with librarians because we do things online - reserve books, download ebooks etc. I believe that this is the trend of the future. So, I would suggest that you study all the online apps available for library use - overdrive, adobe etc have some such apps. I suggest coming up with ideas for helping gifted kids access information readily using friendlier interfaces with librarians able to help them out online and in person when needed - maybe facilitate online book discussions, book clubs, foreign language classes etc.