Talking like Pirates, Minion Bookmarks, Book Fridges and More!

Now that my presentation at the SLANZA conference is done and dusted I thought I'd go over our very busy last couple of weeks of Term 3.  

On 15 September we celebrated International Dot Day in the library.  This is based on the lovely book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.  We had the iPads out and asked anyone in the library if they wanted to make a dot using a drawing app.  I deliberately didn't publicise it as I knew we'd get too many students then.  As it was, as a random pop-up art activity at lunchtime, we had just the right amount of students.  

A student from my Clever Minions advisory group read the book and then several helped younger students learn how to use the app.  Here's our Facebook album of the event.  I sent the completed dots through to thedotproject.org to go on their gallery but they haven't appeared there yet.  It was an enjoyable lunch time, it is amazing how creative students can be when making a dot!

On Friday 18 September we had the launch of a coffee cart outside our library.  This was an initiative from the PTA, but they involved me as thought they might be able to help us increase the number of parents who use the library when it opens on Friday mornings before school.  As the coffee cart was going to be up and running by 8am we decided to open the library earlier to coincide with that (it used to open at 8.30am).  Friday the 18th just happened to be the last school day before Talk Like a Pirate Day (officially on the 19th).  I've been meaning to celebrate this day for a while so it felt like a good idea to combine the launch of the coffee cart with a little pirate celebration in the library!  Esther and I dressed up like pirates and I bought some eyepatches for our student librarians to wear that day.  I found an app that transformed our students into pirates, we played some pirate music and had all our pirate books on display.  And of course we all said "Arrgghhh!" and "Shiver Me Timbers!" a lot.

At morning tea on that Friday I taught the Exploding Minions book club how to make minion bookmarks.  These are so cute!  

It was a great way to road test the activity before running it over a lunchtime.  We discovered that we needed a lot more glue sticks and that it would be easier to have some of the paper pre-cut.  Then on the last Monday of term we gave lunchtime library visitors the opportunity to make their own minions.  We had some of our Clever Minions group available to help but even our youngest students were able to make most of this by themselves.  We had students turning up later who we had to turn down as the activity takes a while to do.  I told them to get their parents to look on Facebook as I posted the video on there for those who missed out.  Here is the Facebook album for this, it had a reach of 548 people, which is very big by our standards.

Also on the last Monday of term we reminded our school staff about using the Book Freezer.  I took a photo of the current books in there and put it up in the staffroom.  I wrote about our Book Fridge back in February, before we launched it.  Jeannie, a friend from the National Library, rang me up and asked me for an update on it as part of a post she was writing.  She's covered everything I would have said there, but I will add a current photo for you:

Oh, and I will mention the name of one of the books on the fridge, "written" by our principal - Mr Sheedy's Guide to Ballet - and how to look good in a tutu. Hehe!

On the last Tuesday of term I visited our public library to talk with their librarians and swap ideas.  I got so much out of that visit I'll do a separate post on that.

And on the last Thursday of the term we had new signage put up, arranged by our visual arts team (although I chose the words, with help from Google Images):

We finished the term with another coffee cart visit, we've had six more parents sign up to borrow books so far, so that has been successful.

I headed off at lunchtime on Friday so I could catch my flight to Christchurch.  I was flying down to the SLANZA conference early so I could visit a friend.  I hadn't visited Christchurch since the big quake in 2011 and was dismayed that so much of it was still so barren.  I do love the ingenuity of using shipping containers for shops while the rebuild goes on,

 and I love the way there is art, sculpture, and... 

a book fridge! in some of the empty spaces.  

I made sure to get my copy of Canterbury Quake signed by Desna Wallace while I was at the conference.  If you haven't read this, it really does give you an insider's experience of the quakes, I highly recommend it.

Ten Library/ICT Projects for 2015

I have some really exciting projects lined up for this year; the key will be finding time for all of them!  Around about this time last year I posted about what was on the agenda for 2014.  Each of the four things I discussed then will need more work this year, so let's start with those:

1. Genre-fication.  This went really well but I still have lots of posters I want to make as a result of it: lists of what genres our Quick Picks readers could move on to, based on what Quick Picks series they are reading; lists of what new genres would be good to try based on what students already like; top 10 lists for each of the genres to help with selection; signs linking genres to non-fiction...that sort of thing.  But I have also been inspired to reinvent our non-fiction area and make the signage there much more bold and attractive.  
2. Ninja Readers Book Club.  While a big improvement over 2013 I still think I can make this better.  So I'll be trying new ideas, some based on a fantastic session on Book Clubs by Carrie Bouffard at the SLANZA Otago Weekend School last year.
3. e-Books.  I just squeaked in getting this up and running at the end of last year so I will need to work on promoting this with teachers, parents and students.
4. Library Expansion.  Well, this is a bit of an ongoing saga.  First we had issues with the courtyard area we were going to expand into.  Apparently the concrete there is pavement concrete and cannot be built on without the great expense of digging it up and starting again.  Now the funding is up-in-the-air because of unexpected changes to other parts of the school budget.  So I have to be patient, although I am still getting our builder in to quote for expanding into our resource room :)

As it happens I had three more big projects that came along last year that I'll also be working on in 2015:

1. Te Totara Times.  I started this blog last year in order to have student-created content for our school website.  I worked in conjunction with one of our teachers and it went well, but this year I need to find a new teacher to help me and I also have more ideas about what we can do.
2. Storytelling Club.  Building on from my Moustache Potatoes Comic Club and our foray into stop motion animation, I'm keen to combine the two, plus some other forms of digital storytelling, and make a storytelling club.  But with a cooler name.
3. BYOD.  We decided to centrally manage our school iPads (for reasons I set out here).  Wiping 140 iPads and adding them to Meraki was a big job for me at the end of last year.  Now we're hoping to have BYOD iPads in place by the end of Term 1, with each child being able to purchase a discounted set of apps from the school.  This is uncharted territory so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it goes smoothly.

And now, because I just don't know when to stop, here are my new projects for 2015:

1. Library Skills Sessions.  We finally have enough hours allocated to our library staff that I can run some library skills sessions for our classes.  I'm sure this will be an item on my list for 2016 as I have much to learn about what I should cover and how quickly.
2. Pinterest Boards.  I do already have a few Pinterest boards but I am keen to build these up, especially around picture books that have themes that would be useful for teachers, like confidence, sharing, bullying, being creative etc.
3. Book Fridge.  At the end of last year I noticed that the school was throwing out a fridge that no longer worked.  So I snapped it up and a teacher aide did some wonderful artwork on it (with permission from Scholastic).  Now I need to launch the idea and explain how a Book Fridge works (basically it's a place for students to swap their own books among themselves).

So, a busy, exciting year ahead for me.  I'm also looking forward to attending the SLANZA conference in Christchurch in September.

'Tis the Season to be VERY Busy

It's that time of year when I'm counting down how many days I have left at school (nine) and trying to work out if I will get everything done.  At the same time I have my sons' end-of-year school events to attend.  My youngest has a leavers' dinner on Tuesday, he is Year 6 at my school and will be leaving me behind and going to intermediate.  That is going to take some getting used to, plus my eldest is finishing intermediate and moving on to high school (how did I get old enough to have a child at high school?!).

Here's a look at what I'll be doing over the next nine days at work:

• Helping Esther run our shelf monitors' cupcake morning tea and our librarians' pizza lunch. 
• Working out how much money I have left in my budget and spending it!  Yes, I still have money left, I'm paranoid about over-spending.
• Summer holiday planning:
• Checking with Barney, our caretaker, about whether he knows we'll be opening the library over summer again.
• Making sure I change the due date for all lending to be 5 February (the last day of our first week back) and increase borrower limits.
• Selecting and wrapping books for our mystery books promotion in preparation for our first afternoon of lending on the 23rd.
• Liaising with Hamilton City Libraries about the nuts and bolts of running their Summer Reading Programme again.
• I've managed to meet with our D.P. and ask about running library skills sessions in the library.  Now that I have the wonderful Esther to do all the book processing I finally have time to do this.  Our D.P. asked me to put together an email about my proposal to go to all the teachers.  That's on tonight's agenda.
• Meeting with the teacher I have been working with on our school blog, the Te Totara Times.  We're going to review how the first year has gone and see what we can do better.  I might blog about this later (after at least nine school days!).
• Meeting with our A.P. to show her the Sphero, oh, must go charge it up.  We've been given one, with the possibility of a set of ten, and I'd love to see how we can use it next year.
• Speaking at our two Year 3/4 assemblies to ask for volunteers to be shelf monitors next year.
• Attending the school assembly on Friday and giving out the library's awards for 'most active borrowers'.
• Finishing a guideline for parents and students about how to use our new eBooks.
• Sorting out what's happening with getting laptops and iPads to the new teachers starting next year.
• Loading the final three sets of iPads onto Meraki.
• Seeing if Barney can fit in attaching my Book Fridge* to the library wall, and typing up my FAQs for it.

Oh man, that's intimidating.  And I'm blogging instead of working now, but my excuse is that this list will help me remember everything (plus it is Sunday).  On the other hand, while there's masses of work on the list a lot of it is very interesting to me.  In fact most of it is there because I wanted to do it so I can hardly complain.  Panic attacks yes, complaining no. 

If you're finishing up at a school somewhere I hope that things go smoothly for you and you're not "cracking under stress" - the caption for this picture I found on Flickr!

Image by Bernard Golbach

*What do you mean you haven't heard of a Book Fridge?!  You'll just have to wait for my blog post (after at least nine school days!).