Gathering Kid Feedback

Image of Jackie Partch sitting 

with a pile of books. Courtesy 

of Jackie Partch.

Today's post comes from Jackie Partch. Jackie is a School Corps Librarian at Multnomah County Library, where she does outreach to K-12 students. She was a member of the 2012 Geisel committee. 

The first time I met with my Geisel committee, I was delighted to find out that kid appeal was something we could consider (unlike some children’s literature awards). The Geisel criteria note that, “Subject matter must be intriguing enough to motivate the child to read” and “The book is respectful and of interest to children.” The manual further encourages committee members to “‘Adopt’ a kindergarten or first grade class and observe how children learn to read.” 

In the fall, once we had a good number of books to consider, I started looking for second grade classes to work with (second graders are often reading well enough to tackle most of the books under consideration). As an outreach librarian to K-12 schools, I had lots of teacher connections, and I finally chose two classrooms. One (Mrs. K’s class) was conveniently located at my child’s school, where most of the children were meeting state reading benchmarks. The other was with Mrs. B, a teacher in another part of town who had really impressed me in previous visits. Her school had 40% English language learners, with more than 20 different languages spoken at home. 

I delivered new tubs of books to each classroom every month. In retrospect, it would have been better if I had been more specific about the kind of feedback I needed. The two teachers shared the books with their students in different ways: Mrs. K usually read them aloud, and Mrs. B added them to her students’ reading tubs for them to read on their own. The latter approach worked better for me, since I was interested in whether the students liked the books on their own (without the benefit of an enthusiastic adult reader) and whether they were at an appropriate reading level. 

In both classrooms, I made regular visits to get the kids’ opinions, working with either the whole class or in small groups. They always wanted to tell me what was funny and what their favorite parts of the books were. The kids would usually tell me the books were too easy or just right, but the teachers would let me know which ones had been challenging for their students. 

The feedback from kids was invaluable. Sometimes the stories I found most humorous fell flat with them, while other times I was surprised that a book that had underwhelmed me was a favorite of theirs. The classroom visits were some of my favorite parts of my Geisel year. I formed a particularly strong bond with Mrs. B’s class, who sent me a video greeting while the committee was meeting at Midwinter and later gave me a bound notebook of thank you letters like this gem. If you’ve served on the Geisel committee and have tips on getting feedback from kids, please share your comments! 

Thank you note for Jackie. Courtesy of Jackie Partch.