Letting Students Use Web 2.0 Tools to Hook One Another on Reading

In the rapidly changing globalized world, school librarians cannot prepare today's students for every possible outcome, but they can give them the skills that will make them adaptable in 21st-century learning and work settings. The mission for school library programs is to ensure that students are effective users of ideas and information by being critical thinkers, enthusiastic readers, skillful researchers, and ethical users of information. School librarians, through their leadership, translate this mission statement into practice by engaging students in meaningful learning experiences, providing access to materials in a variety of formats, and instilling a love of reading. A love of reading is just as essential to the future development of students as showing them how to research and manage information. Evidence from statewide studies has demonstrated that test scores correlated positively and statistically significantly with strong school library reading programs. Unfortunately, reading books for pleasure, in terms of volume and enjoyment among adolescents, seems to be on the decline. A larger spotlight on reading, and why it's enjoyable, needs to be turned on. To do that, school librarians need to answer the question: What are some of the exciting and innovative ways of instilling in students a love of reading that school library programs ought to lead? Addressing this question was the main focus of ReadReviewRecommend, a program that was created and carried out with middle school students in an urban secondary school in Los Angeles. Designed to be a safe and welcoming library program that provides expert guidance and allows students to choose what they want to read, ReadReviewRecommend connected reading and writing with widely popular social media and mobile devices, and made reading exciting and meaningful across different levels of reading comprehension, individual preferences, and technological competencies.