Building bilingual readers: How Sora supports one MA immersion school [Sora Spotlight]
The Sora Spotlight series profiles educators who’ve become Sora champions at their school, impressing us with their creative strategies to get more students reading digitally. To inspire us all to find new ways to reach learners across our communities, we’ve asked them to share their stories of reading success.
In this special Sora Spotlight subseries, we’re focusing on educators within a shared collection that are Sora champions at their school.
Today, we’re spotlighting educators from schools participating in the MLS Commonwealth eBook Collections (CEC). CEC is a statewide initiative to expand access to ebooks to all residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The OverDrive K-12 Shared Sora Collection is a shared ebook and audiobook collection available to all MLS member schools. The collection is managed by the Massachusetts Library System.
Educator Stats
Name:
Becky Sniffen
Describe Your Position:
I am the librarian at Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (PVCICS), a K-12 language immersion school in Hadley, MA. We serve 580 students from more than 35 communities across three counties in the Pioneer Valley – from as far south as Springfield and as far north as Greenfield. Located on busy Route 9 in downtown Hadley, the school is in its 18th year. Seventy percent of the school day for kinders and first graders is taught in Chinese; second through fifth graders have 50% of their days in Chinese. In the elementary school years, students receive all their math and science instruction in Mandarin by native speakers from China and Taiwan. In middle school and high school, all core classes are taught in English, and students have Chinese language class for one or two blocks every day.
In addition to curating an active English language circulation library for students aged 5-18, I am expanding the Chinese language collection, which currently houses 950+ books. I have weekly classes with all students grades K-5 where we conduct author studies, learn research skills, and dive into all things media literacy. I also run an optional Massachusetts Children’s Book Award (MCBA)-based reading program for 3rd-5th graders in elementary school and 6th-8th graders in middle school called Battle of the Books, where kids form teams of four, read a selection of 16 MCBA books, and then come together to “battle” other teams on trivia from the books.
How many years have you been active with OverDrive?
This is my third year promoting Sora to my students.
What are you currently reading?
The Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna.
Becky’s Sora story
Why do you love Sora?
Before moving to Massachusetts, I ran a K-5 elementary school library for 330 students that had 25,000 books. It was a big adjustment to switch to a K-12 school with 580 students that had fewer than 7,000 books, particularly as teachers were eager to use the library collection to support classroom research projects. Because of the youth of the school, the small size of the library, and the school’s fundamental focus on Chinese language and culture, we simply did not have the breadth and depth of science, history, folktales and social studies books needed to satisfy the curiosity and research goals of the students and staff.
Enter: Sora! Having access to thousands of ebooks and audiobooks on countless subjects and a range of reading levels ensures that students are getting the information they want in formats that work for them.
Additionally, our school supports a diverse population that includes many first generation and immigrant students. Twenty-one percent of our students speak a language other than English at home and, in total, there are twenty-two different, non-English languages spoken at our students’ homes. Because of the school’s focus, the library cannot maintain collections in Spanish, Urdu, French, Russian, Tibetan, etc. Here, too, Sora is helpful. In addition to ebooks, audiobooks and magazines available in multiple language, students can use Chrome extensions to translate any Sora ebook into their home language.
Tressa Santillo at MLS has also been instrumental in making MCBA titles in Sora “always available,” which helps tremendously in my Battle of the Books reading program and trivia competition. It levels the experience for emerging readers, who are able to listen to a majority of the stories via audiobook. Sora also levels the experience for those whose families aren’t able to regularly take them to public libraries to pick up books. Sora ensures that any kid who wants to participate in Battle of the Books can participate and can succeed.
Finally, I use Sora with several high school ELA teachers who have students that need extra support — either the students are using Sora to listen to the audiobook version of a class book or they are reading a graphic novel adaptation of a classic work of literature.
One more thing! I love that Sora is free to families. It is such a pleasure to introduce kids and families to all the richness and ease-of-use of Sora and then set them free to explore.
What unique things have you done to help increase student engagement with Sora?
Because of the small size of the library’s physical space and collection, I set a SMART goal last year to increase student awareness and use of Sora by 25%. That year, I taught lessons in my 3rd-5th grade library classes on how to access, search, borrow and return ebooks and audiobooks. We began using Sora during research units to read about influential people and places. I worked with classroom teachers to build curated collections in Sora for folktale studies and biography projects. And I promoted Sora to the Battle of the Books teams and their parents as a great way to read and reread the MCBA books. At the end of that year, I saw a 27% growth in ebook use and a 56% growth in audiobook use.
In what ways has this been successful?
My students *love* days when they have time to log into Sora and explore books. My sense is that Sora has helped some kids to rediscover that books are cool, and that it has boosted both digital AND physical circulations. Parents of Battle of the Books students are grateful for the audiobooks for school commutes and family trips, and because it helps them ensure that their kids are getting through all the reading for the competition. Parents often tell me that they’ll turn on a Sora audiobook for their student and then get sucked into the story themselves – creating opportunities for bonding and memory-making over great books.
What are the benefits of belonging to a shared collection for your students and teachers?
The low cost of entry that comes from participating in the MLS consortium means that small schools like mine can offer tens of thousands of books to our students that we could not afford otherwise. I appreciate that the curricula and foci at so many schools is contributing to the richness of the Sora collection.
Are there any success stories or notable examples of how the collection has made a difference?
I have 81 students this year competing in Battle of the Books (out of a possible 132). With just five physical copies of each book in our library, this many students could not do it without Sora eBooks and audiobooks. Sora ensures that students can read, re-read and study the books so that they can contribute to their team’s effort. Sora is a huge part of the success of this program!
Get to know Becky
If you could have your students read one book and one book only, what would it be and why?
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. As a mom, I see every lesson I want my children to learn spelled out in this book: lessons about courage and honesty and the value of hard work. Lessons about how to be a good person and a generous friend. Lessons about the things in life that really matter. These lessons are beautifully wrapped in an engaging quest with delightful characters. I must have read this out loud five times to my kids. My children are grown now but we still get a warm and fuzzy feeling whenever we remember Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.
What is your favorite “reading” moment with a student?
A Battle of the Books student read the book Ugly by Robert Hoge and said, “I didn’t really like to read before I read Ugly. I just didn’t know that I love reading biographies!” I love that so many students have found their book – or their genre – from participating in Battle of the Books!
What is the most important thing you hope your students take away from reading/education?
I hope my students take away a life-long love of reading that will serve them all of their remaining days. I want them to connect with others over loved stories and favorite authors, find community in book clubs, and experience again and again the satisfaction of devouring a great new read.
