Woodlands Elementary School library is open during the summer to provide access to books

As the end of another school year approached, Woodlands Elementary teacher-librarian Elizabeth Roberts mulled over what might keep kids from losing reading skills over the summer.
Roberts thought that part of the problem might be that some students don't have access to books.
"Which is a huge thing," she said. "The more words they hear, the more stories they read, that impacts their reading ability."
That year, 2010, she helped develop a program that would open the library a day a week through the summer.
Nearly a dozen school libraries in Kitsap open their doors to students during summer break, including about half of South Kitsap's schools and Richard Gordon Elementary in Kingston.
The effort is one attempt to keep kids reading over the summer so that they don't forget vocabulary, reading speed, habits or other skills learned during the school year.


Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/jun/25/education-spotlight-programs-target-summer-slide/#ixzz1yrp1M1eE

Barrow Elementary, media center is the hub of the school

At Barrow Elementary, our media center is the hub of the school. In this school year, we’ve seen students more than 45,000 times, checked out more than 24,000 books and engaged in innovative projects with every grade level. For example, pre-kindergarten students used studio equipment to write and film weather forecasts; kindergartners researched various topics using databases; first-graders created movies about the seasons; third-graders researched and created designs for a new state park, fourth-graders created book trailers advertising authors and fifth-graders taught social studies to one another.

Read more at http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2012-05-11/media-center-paraprofessionals-critical-clarke-schools