Here’s the handout!

After more than a year of digging into New Media, Media Mentorship, and working with various community partners and dynamic educators to learn more and form our own ideas and understanding, I am pleased to say we’ve put together some worthwhile resources!  Many thanks to the IFLS Early Litearcy Implementation Team (names below) for their help and support as I thought about this, and also to Karen Morris (Public Health) and Amy Carriere (CESA 10) who have given me some great insight from the non-library perspective.

The IFLS webpage has the links to all of the resources we have gathered and created.  I tried to distill a few of the most important points made by all of our workshops and research into a parent handout and some talking points for librarians and other professionals who work with families.  We also have links to the materials created by the Wisconsin ILEAD team that was focusing on this topic, and links to the resources shared by Erin Walsh, Chip Donohue, and Carissa Christner at workshops this fall.

How can you use these?  Here are some ideas, generated by the IFLS Early Literacy Implementation Team (now the Youth Services Implementation Team):

• Share Talking Points with other library staff who weren’t able to attend workshops but may be asked questions
• Pass out the handouts at storytimes, at the desk, near children’s computers and iPads
• Share handouts, talking points, and slides with community partners who work with families
• Put slides on early literacy iPads and/or computers for families to look at before using computers
• Include a tip or two into storytimes, outreach visits, and other programming