Create Your Own Personalized

Summer Reading Lists

Summer Reading Lists

Why? – Because you want your reading skills to stay “in shape” during the summer.

Reading is a skill not unlike a sport. If you want to shoot three-pointers, you have to practice. The same is true with reading!

Goals:

To create your own Summer Reading List personalized with your choices from the Furr Library that you can take to the Houston Public Library when our library is closed.

To search the Furr Online Catalogue to locate books you like to read and save this list of books so that it can be printed.

To check and verify that the titles you choose are also available in the Houston Public Library.

StepsGo to our school’s online catalogue and click on “Log In” at the top of the left hand column.

Write your student ID for the user name.

Write your last name for the password.

Click “Login.”

This is what the screen looks like:

How to Search for Books

Begin selecting titles for your summer reading lists by searching the catalog. You can search by subject, author, title, or all words to find interesting titles to add to your Summer Reading List.

The Search Screen

Strategies

Searching by favorite authors

Searching by titles that you know you want to read

Searching by subjects that interest you

Including “help me find a book” along with the above searches

With “help me find a book checked”, Alexandria will only report back books on the reading level of the person logged-in. (These will range from 50 above and 100 below a person’s lexile.)

If you have a high lexile, leave this unchecked.

Let’s try a search for “dogs.”

Seven books come up. They are all in the Lexile range of 550-700 which is within the zone for a 650 Lexile reader. Now each title can be looked at to determine whether or not the book is also at Houston Public Library.

Click on a book that interests you.

By clicking on the first record, Harry, the Dirty dog, you can determine if it is at Houston Public Library.

Look under the title. It does not say available at the public library. Therefore this book should not be added to the Summer Reading List.

Look at the 2nd book, Henry Huggins. Under the title, it says that it is at the Houston Public Library.

Since it is available at the Houston Public Library, you can click the blue plus sign to add it to your basket.

When you click on the plus sign, you will see some options in a box, choose Summer Reading List.

Look in the column on the left. It indicates that one item has been added to the Summer Reading List.

Click on “previous” or “simple” to continue searching and add to the saved lists until you have a list of at least 5 books.

When you have chosen your books, click on “Summer Reading List” in the column on the left.

Editing Summer Reading Lists

Students can change their minds and delete titles from a saved list by logging in, and clicking on the Summer Reading List. Click on the red x to delete a title. See below.

When you have reviewed your choices, you can print your list.

Take your personalized Summer Reading List to your local public library to start checking out the books.

Happy summer reading!!