Beyond the 5 Practices: How Storytime Helps Kids Get Ready for Success in School and Life

Hi all! Today I had the pleasure of presenting on executive (“soft”) skills development in storytime at the Nevada Library Association Conference. It was a wonderful opportunity and I am grateful to everyone who attended and SHARED their storytime best practices that help children become better human beings! At any rate, here’s the presentation. I try very hard to NOT include a lot of text on my slides, so some of these may be hard to figure out, but as soon as I’m able I’ll post a summary of the presentation to give you more information. In the meantime, though, here’s an idea of WHAT executive function is, why it’s important for children to develop these skills (SPOILER: they’re a better predictor of success in school than IQ) and how our storytimes are helping children develop these skills. (SPOILER NUMBER 2: LOTS of what we do helps develop executive function!)