Teaching Practice Collection
The Teaching Practice Collection (formerly called the School Services Collection) forms part of the learning resources collection. It contains recent children’s fiction and non-fiction, a range of text books to GCSE level, some multimedia items and music scores.
Where is it?
The Teaching Practice Collection is located on the 4th Floor of the Library.
Who might find it useful?
Student teachers – the collection provides material for them to use in schools and to provide a variety of material for them to critically evaluate.
People studying the history of children’s literature – the collection includes some useful material for historical study of children’s literature. Another resource is the Children's Collection held at Special Collections Services, which is located on Redlands Road adjacent to the London Road Campus.
Is it a collection for children to use?
The collection is for student teachers and items are acquired with them in mind. Material is acquired in part to develop the critical ability of teachers.
The collection policy is not the same as for a children’s library, and some items may be considered unsuitable or offensive to children.
Borrowing items from the Teaching Practice Collection
Most items may be borrowed for the duration of the academic term. You can take out as many books as your borrowing rights allow.
How are the items arranged?
Fiction – alphabetically by author with the spine label prefix 'CF' or, if a larger sized book (folio), 'FCF'.
Some popular types of fiction have coloured spine labels to help you select them whilst browsing:
- collections/short stories have a red spine sticker
- myths/legends/fairy stories have a yellow spine sticker
- dual language stories have a blue spine sticker
Music scores - spine label prefixes 'MI' for infants' music, 'MJ' for junior music and 'MS' for secondary level music.
Non-fiction - uses the same Dewey Decimal Classification as the main collection, simplified in some cases. Spine labels have the prefix 'C' or, if a larger sized book (folio), 'FC'.
Textbooks - use the same Dewey Decimal classification as the main collection. Spine labels have the prefix 'T' or, if a folio, 'FT'.
Other children's resources
You may want to investigate these non-Library resource centres located on the London Road Campus.
University of Reading Institute of Education students have access to the Teaching Resource Centre which contains an extensive collection of children's books to support teachers.
The National Centre for Language and Literacy (NCLL) houses a collection of over 18,000 trade and education publications published during the last 5 years. For information please contact the Centre Resources Officer Sue Abbas (email: s.a.abbas@reading.ac.uk) or visit the National Centre for Language and Literacy website.
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