Development of Library Period Program for Teaching Information Literary Skill in Primary School

ABSTRACT This study aimed at developing library period programme for teaching information literacy skills. In the study, library period programme (LPP) such as Library instruction, Story hour and project work were the independent variables. The dependent variables were literacy and communication skills, library use skills and critical thinking skills, all parts of information literacy skills. The study was an instrumentation research in which experiment was used to test effect of the developed curriculum. The population of the study included all primary 5 pupils of 15 public primary schools with libraries in Nsukka LGEA of Enugu state. The sample consisted of 346 primary 5 pupils of the 10 public primary schools purposively selected from the15 primary schools. However, random sampling was used to assign subjects to experimental and control group. The instruments for data collection were Library Period Programme (LPP), Observation and document analysis. In order to ascertain the effect of the curriculum, pre test was given to the whole subjects prior to the commencement of the teaching. Subjects received teaching covering the whole topics for second term-a period of 12 weeks. Post test was given thereafter and the hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the information literacy skills of pupils participating in library period programme and those not participating was tested using t- test statistics. The study also made use of mean score, standard deviation and charts to present and analyze data. Observations showed that pupils exhibited tremendous development as regard their literacy and communication skills, library use skills, and critical thinking skills during the cause of the treatment. It was also found out that pupils taught with library period curriculum did significantly better in the project given than those not taught. It was therefore concluded that the Library Period Programme (LPP) might be the powerful vehicle behind the higher performance of the experimental group. This had some implications for educational policy makers, school administrators, school xiii librarians and class teachers. It was therefore recommended that all must join hands in the information literacy race to make pupils lifelong and comfortable learners.