Developing a whole school inquiry research process model

When our Director of Professional Learning was appointed, she was keen to establish a common language or framework to distinguish between the stages involved in the inquiry process.
(Marzano & Kendall, 2007)

• forming and describing the inquiry activity
• finding valid and reliable evidence for the inquiry activity
• analysing and interpreting the evidence selected
• evaluating the conclusions, process or claims

This framework uses reflection as the connection between, and driver of, all the stages. The Library had already developed a Research Process model which had been in place for a number of years but it was not being widely utilised across the different departments, so a small working committee was formed by the Director of Professional Learning, involving myself as the Curriculum Leader: Library & Information Services and one of the Senior Humanities teachers.

A wide consultation process followed, and over the course of a semester we met with key stakeholders including all the Curriculum Leaders, until a new MSM Inquiry Research Process model was formulated and approved. The process is not linear and the inquirer/student can come in at any point along the continuum depending on the task requirements.

If you feel inspired to implement something similar at your school please acknowledge the sources above and give attribution to Mt St Michael's College, Ashgrove.

We're just wild about Harry (Potter)

It’s been 20 years since J.K. Rowling waved her magic wand and introduced readers to her boy wizard in “Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone” and things have never been the same. Since then, seven books have been translated into 79 languages and have sold more than 450 million copies worldwide.

When we placed posters around the school asking the question, “How well do you know Harry Potter?” our girls were instantly hooked, which is not always easy with a teenage clientele!

 

Happy Birthday Harry!

  On Harry’s birthday (July 31), all students were invited to participate in some “Quizardry” in the Library. The original sign-up sheet catered for teams of four, to compete in each of the Hogwarts houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin.

On the first day we were fully subscribed so we created two teams per house i.e. Hufflepuff 1and Hufflepuff 2. It still wasn’t enough to meet the demand, as some of our teachers wanted to enter a team too! 

Great to see our staff getting into the spirit of the day. Sadly they weren't the winning team!

Once the girls heard this, they became very competitive.

Our two Academic Captains volunteered to be our Quizmasters and one of our library staff created the questions, answer sheets and PPT slides. On the day, many of the girls and the teachers arrived in full regalia. Pottermania is well and truly alive at MSM!

I’d highly recommend making this an annual event in your school library as there is not a lot of effort required to create something that has such a positive effect.

Because we held the quiz during lunch we only had time to ask 12 questions. At the conclusion, all teams swapped their answer sheets while the Academic Captains called out the answers. We didn’t have a clear winning team so went into 3 tie-breaking rounds before we had to award joint winners.

One of our Senior teams congratulate their lucky mascot from Yr 7!

That winning feeling when you know the answer to the tie-break question.

As Harry celebrates his 20^th anniversary, he has certainly shown that he still has the magic touch. We’re looking forward to celebrating his 21^st next year.

Mrs Sandra Mannion

Curriculum Leader: Library & Information Services

Mt St Michael’s College

Creating your Library Brand

Your brand needs to tell your story

At the start of the year we held a number of extended Library Team meetings to define our Library’s story and then visually convey this story via a new library logo and other branding elements. Technically, a brand is a mark, or logo, combined with specific colours and fonts that identifies a particular product or service to potential users. More generally, a brand is shorthand for the story that an organization wants to tell potential users about how it can meet a need in their lives. (Doucett, 2008)

What is your library's story?
What do you want to create in your library for the future?

Our Library story at Mt St Michael's College is told in the dot points below.

• We provide a welcoming space that engages students.
• We are information specialists who enable members of the College community to become creative and critical thinkers who use information effectively.
• We are innovators who stay informed about current trends in education.
• We equip students with the skills needed to actively participate in a digital world.
• We promote a positive reading culture and provide opportunities for users to engage in literature activities.

Once we had a clear story we needed to ensure that our logo or look clearly supported it.
The story and look had to work together. 

Our story can be summed up with four Cs - CONNECT, CELEBRATE, CREATE and CHALLENGE. All of these link together using the College colours and the four House colours.

New Library Logo

Library branding appears at the bottom of all marketing and promotional material.

We now use these 4 pillars for marketing purposes each term. 

In Term 1 we "branded" all our lunchtime activities with the theme of 

CONNECT TO YOUR LIBRARY

Students were asked to take a strip of coloured paper and write down one way in which they "Connect" to the MSM Library before attaching it to the chain.

This term we have changed our "branding" to MSM LIBRARY CELEBRATES

We have enjoyed creating these exciting and attention-grabbing ways to tell our story so that our clientele of staff and students cannot miss seeing and understanding it. 

Doucett, E. (2008) Creating your library brand : communicating your relevance and value to your patrons. Chicago, Illinois: American Library Association.

Sharing Innovative School Library Practices

Have you downloaded Softlink's recent publication, "School Libraries share innovative ideas yet?"

Like many other teacher-librarians, I always participate in the Australian and New Zealand Softlink School Library Survey. Last year they included a new question:-

"Do you have an innovative practice story about your library you would like to share?"

Over 300 participants responded, and many of these ideas feature in the document which can also be accessed via the resources page on the Softlink website.

"Whether you're looking for inspiration or just want to see what your peers are up to, you'll find plenty of ideas that demonstrate just how versatile school libraries can be. The paper includes fresh ideas for traditional library roles, such as learning support, reading programs and organising the collection. There are also sections that focus on the changing role of libraries, with ideas for innovative use in the digital age, as well as contributing to overall student well-being. There are even some handy tips on making your budget stretch even further."

Coincidentally, before this paper was published, I had asked my Library staff to come up with at least two new ideas or innovations which they'd like to see implemented in 2017.
We quickly filled a whiteboard with our ideas and are now prioritising them.

Here are some of our innovative Library ideas for 2017

The innovative ideas in the Softlink paper are grouped into 9 categories. I have annotated each one with my own favourites from the ideas which were shared by the original respondents to the survey.

• Ideas for the Library space "When we opened our library last term we made a 'shelfie' booth. Students had their photo taken with the first book they took out of the library. This became our first display."
• Ideas to support learning "I create library displays featuring students' current topics and inquiries. Associating fiction and non-fiction books with these displays, draws in both students and staff, identifying the library as a functional research area."
• Ideas to encourage engagement "We have done very well with eBooks, partly because I am asking students to borrow while I teach them how to access them, and partly because we are publicising them heavily."
• Ideas involving technology "One of the main goals we have achieved this year is the implementation of a new learning management system with enables federated searching."
• Ideas for organising the collection "The use of spine label icons (many produced in house) makes searching for certain types of books much easier."
• Reading program ideas "Grades 7-9 have engaged in a reading program which includes silent reading at the start of every class and fortnightly library visits."
• Budget ideas "We are involved in sharing resources through a network of other school libraries."
• Student wellbeing ideas "We have taught the students that reading a book for 6 minutes can relieve their stress levels by 68%"
• Ideas for using Oliver 5 "Advertise library and school events and competitions on your Oliver v5 home page."

School library staff are creative! We are always looking for new and exciting ways to make our libraries better and more inviting for our students, staff and wider community.

DO YOU HAVE AN INNOVATIVE LIBRARY IDEA YOU'D BE WILLING TO SHARE?