News from a School Library
Despite my best intentions of contributing regularly to this blog, the second half of the year passed in a blur and I never found the time to update what I had been doing.
In Week 6 of Term 3, I held the Festival of Books (aka Book Week), coinciding with the Children's Book Council of Australia event. Book Week is regularly celebrated at primary schools but it seems to fall out of fashion in secondary schools. I find this quite sad because it seems by the time students reach high school we forget how important it is to continue to promote aesthetic reading. Secondary students may already know how to read but that shouldn't mean we (as teachers, parents, library staff) stop promoting the importance of reading for pleasure. What I accomplished in 2018:
Onwards and upwards for 2019.
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Hot off the press! Just published this Library Circulation report today. I'm not sure how it compares to similar-sized schools (we have 1,500 students). It will be interesting to track this data over the next couple of years. I'm hoping this will promote discussion among teachers and maybe a bit of healthy competition among students.
One of the expectations of my role is the development of a volume reading culture. It’s a simple enough goal – get students reading as much as possible. I’m not talking about curriculum-based reading but rather aesthetic reading – reading for pleasure (a completely foreign concept to some of our students, unfortunately). I’ve only been in this role since the beginning of the year, so I’m still figuring out exactly how best to do this. Should I have some sort of reading program? In previous years, the library and English Department had a “99 books program” complete with activities students needed to complete after every book read. Based on my own experiences as a student, that didn’t exactly appeal. There’s nothing worse than reading a great book and then having to complete some sort of comprehension activity that completely sucks the joy right out of you! (At least, in my opinion). Should I have regular “library lessons” with classes? I work in a secondary school so there is no scheduled time for classes to come to the library as there may be in some primary schools. That said, I have had several teachers bring their classes to the library throughout the year but this is completely up to the teacher and the time they have available in a crowded curriculum. The minimum expectation is that English teachers allocate 30 minutes of their class time a week to reading for pleasure. So what can we do in that small amount of time to create a volume reading culture? According to Jori Krulder and Pernille Ripp, it’s all about giving students complete choice and showing how much we, as teachers, value reading ourselves. So, here are five ways I plan to build a culture of reading at my school: To some people, the library is a quiet, studious place for reading and learning. Personally, I believe the library is at its best when it is vibrant with energy and activity, chaotic and noisy. Don’t get me wrong, there must be quiet places where you can retreat into a good book or concentrate on study but in the hub of the library, noise is essential. My school library this week has been anything but quiet. On Monday, we launched the inaugural “Rock the Library” Celebration Week (coinciding with the ALIA Library and Information Week). The idea behind our event is to promote the importance of the library (and all things reading and literacy) in the life of the school to both students and teachers. Basically, I wanted to remind people that the school library exists (I’m sure some of them had forgotten where we were!) and that the possibilities for engagement between the library, myself as the teacher-librarian and the school are endless. My hope is that this will become an annual event at our school and I have been overwhelmed by the positive response I’ve received from staff and students so far. Every lunch-time this week we’ve had scores of students spending the entire break searching the shelves and flicking through books for one of the five Golden Tickets. It's Thursday and there’s still one ticket left! It’s been chaos and our shelves are a mess at the moment (what Dewey Decimal system?!?) but I think it’s definitely been worth it. Although students aren’t necessarily borrowing the books they look through (something to work on next year), the hunt for tickets has certainly brought students who usually wouldn’t be seen dead in the library through our doors. In my book, that’s a win (pun intended)! In addition to hunting for Golden Tickets, I’ve run other activities and competitions. Students can:
Rock the Library Week has also engaged the teachers. They have contributed to the displays by having their photos taken while reading in an unusual place: in the gym, doing yoga, skating, while doing a handstand – just to name a few. Some students seem to believe that it’s only the English teachers (and the library staff) who do such a crazy thing like read books so it’s been wonderful to challenge this view, even if it is done in a silly way. Some teachers have even brought their classes to the library during lessons to participate in the activities. I don’t know that this event has actually increased our borrowing statistics (although it’s probably too early to tell). However, it has certainly gotten people talking about and visiting the library and when it comes to promoting reading, maybe that’s half the battle.
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AuthorHi, I'm Kelly. Archives
January 2019
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