Celebrating Library Lovers' Week

Romancing our way through February

For the last few years we have extended Library Lovers' Day into a whole week which is scheduled into the College Calendar. Week 4 is the perfect time to focus on all the things we love about Libraries, as by then, the teachers and students have settled into the rhythm of a new school year. While it's not as high profile (or as much work) as Book Week, it's a great way to foreground the importance of our library to our school community especially with the Year 7s. As explained in my previous post, the range of Library Lovers' activities were promoted to the Year 7 cohort through their Library Orientation lessons.

What we offered:

A Library Lovers' Staff competition announced at morning briefing on Monday, February 15. Staff had to match the names of famous couples in literature to go into the draw for a book and some Valentine-themed chocolates. Winners were drawn at Staff briefing on Friday.

A similar competition was held for students in Years 8 -12

Year 7s were all given a heart-shaped template during their Library Orientation lessons in Week 2 or 3. They could use this as a competition entry by simply writing their name, homeroom, title of a book they love and why they love it. For those more artistically inclined, they could decorate the heart as well, and these entries were judged and then turned into a display called, "Year 7 loves books."

 

MSM Reads - A whole school reading event took place during extended Home Room on February 16. The students were encouraged to borrow out a romance-themed book from one of our two displays - "Save the date to read a good book" and "Romancing through February."

 

 





MSM Junior Readers Book Club was launched for the year on Friday, February 19. This is aimed at students in Years 7 - 9. The MSM Senior Readers Book Club for Yrs 10-12 will start up again in Week 5 in another part of the library. Both clubs are overseen by me and one of the English teachers who is a voracious reader of young adult fiction.

 

By default, we really end up with a Library Lovers' month, because we keep up the displays until early March when we start to change things over for Easter.

It's school library orientation time

What first comes to mind when you think about the beginning of a new school year? For many teacher-librarians, introducing their new Yr 7s to the library, in a way that's both engaging and fun is a high priority.  

Year 7s excitedly borrow for the first time. So many choices!

Last year was a whirlwind, as 10 classes (6 x Yr 7s and 4 x Yr 8s) all had to be scheduled for an introduction to the library in a short amount of time.

Fast forward to 2016  and our second cohort of 160 Year 7s have just commenced high school and we only get one shot to "sell" them on the importance of the library - So you really want to make it count!




Bright ideas is a blog by the School Libraries Association of Victoria (SLAV) and the State Library of Victoria (SLV). Their post "Revamping your school library orientation" (December 12, 2013)http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2013/12/12/revamping-your-school-library-orientation/comment-page-1/#comment-7221 contains some excellent ideas for

• Introducing the school library
• Becoming familiar with the library
• Understanding Fiction and Non-Fiction

Confidently using the catalogue


 

During Week 2 and 3 all the Year 7 English teachers brought their class to the library during one of their lessons. There is no set text for English in Term 1, and the teachers love to start their classes with 10 minutes of sustained, silent reading so we had no trouble getting any of them to make a booking with the Teacher-Librarian and the Library Technician for their Library Orientation lesson.

So What Did We Do?

We started with some word jumbles projected onto the big screen. The words related to things the girls would find in the library e.g. KOBOS - BOOKS and NGMIESAAZ - MAGAZINES

After having all members of the library team introduce themselves to the girls, we then highlighted the main areas in the library they could use. Next up, was a game of True or False in regard to our Library Services. The girls were encouraged to look for the correct answers either in their diary or on our Library Site on the Intranet which was projected on the screen.


Learning how to search for an item on Oliver


 

Then it was time to be introduced to our Library Management system, Oliver. After playing a short video created by Softlink which we've embedded into our Library site, our Library Technician provided some practical examples relating to the searching of both fiction and non-fiction books. It was delightful to see how excited the girls were to borrow for the first time (especially when they heard we allowed them to borrow up to 10 items at a time!) and many of them were confident enough to even ask for an item to be reserved if it was out on loan. To guide them during borrowing time, we provided hard copies of the "Recommended Summer Reading List for Year 7s" which we had sent home to all their parents at the end of last year.

After borrowing, the girls returned to their tables and were each given a "Heart template." We always celebrate Library Lovers Week and this year we created a couple of competitions only for the Year 7s to enter. For the first competition, all they had to do was write their name, homeroom, the title of a book they love and the reason why, inside the template. For those who were more artistic, they were encouraged to decorate their heart and were told they would be judged on artistic merit.

We've had a lot of positive feedback from the teachers in regard to our sessions and the borrowing statistics have certainly gone up since then. Most importantly of all, many Year 7s have now found a home somewhere in the library during break times which makes it all worthwhile Would love to hear from other TLs out there. What do you do for Library Orientation?




One of the many displays the Yr 7s were able to borrow from.