Our next decision was to promote the Primary (early elementary grades) and Intermediate (upper elementary grades) in the district's K-5 elementary schools. I was fortunate that the district provided the library media specialists a day to work with the library aide at each school prior to the start of the school year. I used this time to introduce the Golden Archer Award program to the library aides. They gave favorable responses to the idea, as well as ideas for how they could do to support the program at their schools. During our discussions, I shared an introductory email I planned to send out to staff, and made changes based on the library aides' input. They were also shown a bookmark that was developed to promote the program. Each aide agreed to make a permanent display in their school's library media center using the books, as well as solicit nominations from students for the following year's list.
At the beginning of the year the elementary teachers were sent an email explaining the program that also contained an annotated bibliography of the titles. Some teachers read the books on list to their students, particularly at the lower grades. At one school the library aide conducted a story time with the kindergarten through second grade classes during their time in the library media center. She also book talked the titles on the intermediate list to the third through fifth grade classes when they visited the library. In other schools teachers read various books from the list to their classes. Additional reminder emails were sent to staff to remind them of the program and when voting would take place. Flyers were created that featured the book covers and placed in strategic places in the library media center and various classes rooms. Unfortunately, I no longer have these visual aids since I no longer work for that district.
Voting for the Golden Archer takes place in February, with March 1st being the deadline for turning ballots in. Since we were promoting two different lists I was asked the question how many books can students vote for? Many students wanted to vote for one book off of each list. After checking with WEMTA's Golden Archer Committee I was informed that students could vote for a total of ONE book. As a result, a ballot listing all titles was developed and made available to students. There were several reasons the question of how many books students can vote for came around. Advanced readers in the lower grades were reading books from the Intermediate list, which consists of chapter books as well as the Primary list, which is made up of picture books. Some second grade teachers were reading books from the Intermediate lists to their classes. The most intriguing reason behind the question was posed by 4th and 5th grade students at an elementary school that had a reading buddies program. Students in 4th and 5th grade were paired with a student in either kindergarten or 1st grade. The older students were encouraged to check out picture books to read to their reading buddies. Many of the 4th and 5th grade students at this school read books from the Golden Archer Primary list to their reading buddies and want to vote for their favorite picture book from the Golden Archer list. This group of students were disappointed when they learned that they could only vote for one book. However, they were told that they could nominate picture books for the following year's Primary book list.
After all of the ballots were counted an announcement was made at each school to announce the school's winner. We also announced the district's winning title. I attended the WEMTA conference where the state wide winner was announced. After the state winners were announced I emailed the library aides so that they could arrange for announcements to be made at their individual schools. Out of six schools, two school voted for different titles from the Primary category. One of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books by Jeff Kinney won the Intermediate category within the district as well as at the state level.
Nominations for the upcoming year's book lists closes on May 1st. The next step of the program was to solicit nominations from students. The Golden Archer Award is truly award that is given by the children of Wisconsin. Once again emails were sent to the elementary teachers to explain how we, library media center staff, would be collecting title nominations from students. One of the aides developed a form that asked for the following information: title, author, publication (information that is required from the Golden Archer Committee) as well as space for students to elaborate why they were nominating the book. Filling out this part of the form was optional but helpful for narrowing an individual school's list of nominations down to the 5 titles that can be submitted when we were narrowing the list down. Often multiple students nominated the same title. Collusion by students? Probably, but what a great way to get students talking about books that they have enjoyed reading that isn't totally lead by adults.
If I have the opportunity to work with middle school or elementary students again I will definitely implement this program. We ordered 5 copies of each title for each library. Since we started promoting this program in September the library aides felt that we could get away with just 3 copies of each title, except for really popular books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which seems to be one of those titles that you can never have enough copies.
Some things that I would do in the future to promote this program include that I didn't do in the past include:
- article(s) in the school or principal or grade level's newsletter
- information on the library media center's website - including pictures of book covers
- tweets on the library media center's Twitter account or Instagram account and other social media accounts
- reminders on the school calendar - including voting deadlines & possibly a count down
- school wide announcements over the PA
- book club featuring books on the Intermediate and Middle/Junior High lists
- book talks on the Primary books to older students who are reading buddies
- brief explanation of the program to staff at a staff meeting with time for questions
- announce school wide winner via email, newsletters, webpages, and Twitter, as well as other social media venues
- check with WEMTA to see if I can use the Golden Archer Award graphic to promote the program
- promote the information on each title found on Teachingbooks.net website to teachers so that interested teachers and utilize lesson plans, information about the author
- create and share an annotated bibliography with staff of the Golden Archer Award nominees that includes pictures of the book covers
Things I did beyond emailing staff to promote the program. I heavily relied on email for expedience since I had minimal time in each building since I was assigned to multiple schools.
- contact the local public library's children and young adult librarians to inform them that the school will be participating in the program as well as to share the book list(s) being used.
- posters created on 8x11 paper to promote the various lists that featured pictures of each book's cover
- created a list in our library management system, Destiny, that could be access by all patrons
- shared an annotated bibliography with staff of the Golden Archer Award nominees
- use Google forms for voting and title nominations
- set area to display only Golden Archer nominees from September through February
- display the Golden Archer winners from March through the end of the year in the Golden Archer display area.
- continue to purchase Golden Archer Award seals from WEMTA to place on current and past winners
- create a bookmark promoting the Golden Archer Award nominees
- obtain a poster from a book vendor that shows all of the Golden Archer Award Winning Books
- announce school winner by category
- announce district winner by category
- announce the state winner by category
The Golden Archer Award is sponsored by WEMTA, the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association. This particular award has three division, Primary, Intermediate and Middle/Junior High. This program allows all students who attend K-8 schools to participate. Each list consists of 5 titles that have been published within the past 5 years. The rules of the program are well written and truly provide a venue for authors to be given an award from their readers within the state of Wisconsin. Additional information can be found on the WEMTA page - http://www.wemta.org/programs/golden_archer_awards.cfm Other states have similar award programs in place. The Junior Library Guild maintains a listing of various state book awards at https://www.juniorlibraryguild.com/awards/list.dT/state-awards What surprised me when I looked at this list is that every state has multiple state awards for children and young adult books.
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