Tag Archives: classroom library questionnaire

Parents and Caregivers: Use This Tool to Build a More Diverse Home Book Collection

Educators Grade Level Resources, images of survey forms against an orange background

We are so excited to announce that we have adapted our beloved Classroom Library Questionnaire into a tool for families and caregivers! Our newly launched Home Library Questionnaire is now available for free to download.

The Home Library Questionnaire will help you:

  • Reflect on your home library
  • Broaden the types of books you read with your children
  • Diversify your child’s independent reading and advocate for more inclusivity in school booklists
  • Choose books that are inclusive of all people, backgrounds, and cultures

Here are some additional tips about reading with your child and making the most out of your reading experience:

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library?

Teachers, let’s talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It’s an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes.

Unfortunately, we often see classroom libraries that group diverse books into categories that isolate or limit their use. Simply having a book bin labeled “cultures from around the world” or “black history month books” does not mean your library is culturally responsive. We need to think critically about how these books reflect the diversity of our students, their backgrounds, and the communities in which we live while exposing them to new ideas and concepts. Does your classroom library contain books that include main characters of color or with disabilities? Do your books featuring people of color only focus on issues of race, prejudice, or discrimination? Do they go beyond ethnic heritage months? Do they only focus on cultural traditions and foods? Continue reading