Gearing up for Summer Lending

I have five days left of school and we've just completed our stocktake (apart from the nagging of the slowpokes to return their books).  Now my attention is turning to our summer lending.  We've been lending over the holidays for six years now.  We started with a trial, by issuing books to our Year 4s on the last day of term, with a signed parent permission slip.  Now we open for one afternoon a week over the holidays. We lend to parents as well as students, in the hopes of building a lasting relationship and having them continue to borrow when we are open on Friday mornings during the term.  There's no permission slip anymore, but students have to be accompanied by their parents.

We have also built a relationship with Hamilton City Libraries.  For the past three years, we have run their summer reading programme from our library.  We promote and administer the programme and in return they provide us with the necessary materials and also come in for one afternoon in the holidays to run some activities with our students.

On the week before Christmas we offer "mystery books", an idea borrowed from Hamilton City Libraries.  We choose library books and wrap a couple up and put them under our "tree" with a tag indicating what age group they are aimed at.  We try to pick some of our newer, shinier books with a broad appeal.  This is always very popular.

The quieter days tend to be the weeks straight after Christmas and New Year's when a lot of families are away.  This year for our 4 January opening we are going to have our origami books out, along with some origami paper taken from old library books.  I hope that will be a nice activity for families to do when they visit, and also one that won't need a lot of supervision so I can still issue books at the same time.  I'm lucky in that Esther, our library assistant, will also be around, but her hours are for doing projects over the holidays so I try not to pull her away from that too much.

This year we are also running a Reading Wonderland competition.  The Reading Wonderland is the revamped area of the library that was completed this year.  To celebrate our first year with this lovely new space we trying to encourage our students to come up with creative ideas about the area.  Here's the poster to explain more:

I had to redo it to include things like the maximum length of the items and how many times students could enter.  Hopefully I have covered everything now.  I have no idea how it will go but hopefully it will provide students with a fun, creative outlet over the holidays.  Then I will find out how to turn the best entries into a book.  I suspect it will be more time-consuming than I anticipate, a side-effect of most of the projects I seem to come up with!

Last year I made a summer reading brochure to advertise what the library had to offer over summer.  This year I decided to use our newly established TT TV channel to promote the various library activities.  At the last minute we decided not to do an episode in the final week, which meant we made a bigger episode than usual this week, containing three different segments about the library!

             *start at 3:17

Introducing our Reading Wonderland

Last week we opened our new library space and our students got VERY excited!  Here's proof:

A neat feature is the little creatures, hidden doors and adorable bugs that can be found in the room if you look hard enough.  Spotting these was the reason for a lot of the extra noise!  Here's a few of them...

History

For a long time I lamented over the lack of space in our library.  Considering we have 750-800+ students, our 89m2 library was often jam packed.  "It's like a club" was a teacher's comment after venturing in one lunchtime.  

In January 2014, I made a proposal to the Board of Trustees to enclose the library courtyard area.  I was given the go ahead to get some quotes but my happiness was short-lived as incorrect concrete had been laid and therefore walls could not be erected on it.  The cost of digging up the old concrete and then laying new concrete made the project unaffordable.

For some reason this area wasn't very popular!

I considered taking over a bit of our adjoining resource room, but a giant air conditioning unit would have to have been moved.  In the end I looked at enclosing the courtyard with an outdoor screen, much like cafes often have, in order to weatherproof it and be able to lay carpet.  This revised proposal was accepted late last year and all systems were go!

Esther, our library assistant, suggested I put tiered seating in the room and then she found an apprentice builder who could do it for us.  I love the different dynamic this creates in the space.

My vision for the area was to have a theme so that students feel they are in a special spot, quite different from the rest of the library.  I ended up asking our very creative teacher aide, Jenna, to make a meadow/forest mural that went around every wall in the space.  Considering the walls are made of corrugated iron, glass, and wooden slats, I asked Jenna to go with quirky and whimsical art that incorporated the different surfaces, and then I showed her some art I liked that I'd saved in Pinterest.  I also asked for a blue sky ceiling where students could see different shapes in the clouds.  Because I like to be difficult!  And then I left Jenna to it because I knew that what she came up with would be way cooler than I could imagine.  And it was!

Naming the Room

I wanted the room to have its own identity so it needed to have its own name.  We held a competition last week to see what the students could come up with.  We had 379 entries; here are some of the key words that kept appearing: forest, garden, reading, nature, magic, enchanted, paradise, mystery, secret, fantasy, dreamland, wonderland, kingdom, peaceful, beautiful.  Aren't they lovely words to have associated with the library?  The winning entry was 'Reading Wonderland'.

The Opening Ceremony

My enthusiastic library advisory group, the Mighty Magical Moustache Girls, helped organise an official opening ceremony, which took place during morning tea on Tuesday.  I invited the staff involved with transforming the courtyard, our senior management and our Board of Trustees (although unfortunately, apart from our principal and DP, none of the Board could make it).  We also had some reporters from the Te Totara Times and we invited our book club, the Ferocious Bookworms, because the Moustache Girls felt we needed more of an audience!

We had a shared morning tea of the very sugary variety and then I thanked the Board of Trustees for their support and some of the Mighty Magical Moustache Girls thanked key staff and talked about our future plans for the room.  I announced the winner of the naming competition and then she cut the ribbon and declared the Reading Wonderland open.  Esther and I had blown up lots of balloons and put them in the room so everyone had a bit of fun with those.  It was short and sweet, which is how I like my ceremonies!  Here is the report from the Te Totara Times (also short and sweet!).

Communicating with the Community

Throughout the creation of the mural I posted photos to our library Facebook page.  These had positive responses, with many of our community knowing our artist Jenna, as she is also a parent of children in the school, and a teacher aide here.

I also shot the video of the children's reactions to the Reading Wonderland and shared this with our community on our school website and our school and library Facebook pages.  I don't think photographs would have done justice to the noise levels and extreme levels of excitement!

I invited parents to come in and view the Reading Wonderland and we saw some new faces, which was great. 

Plans for the Reading Wonderland

I am looking forward to the Reading Wonderland being a place where our classes are read to, where students can read with each other, and where we can also run some special activities.  At present it hosts the Mighty Magical Moustache Girls, the Ferocious Bookworms and the Ninja Unicorns in Uniforms (our creative writing group).  I have plans for a crochet group and we also want to do occasional craft activities and have reader's theatre sessions.  

I'm so happy to have such a great room.  It was definitely worth the time and effort involved with making it happen.  One of our Year 2 teachers told me that a reluctant reader in her class asked if the room would be open again at lunchtime.  Music to my ears!

Photographic Tour of my Library

Yesterday my post was a "Photographic Tour of School Libraries" that I visited last year and today, as part of a photographic weekend bonanza, I'm going to show you my library!  This is actually the second 2016 EdBlogNZ Challenge, which is aimed at classroom teachers but I amend it to suit my profession.

This is the view from behind the circulation desk.  The desk is wide and long and if I could I would replace it with something more compact and accessible from both sides.  I managed to 'find' a second computer, which helps our senior classes get through the issues and returns process a lot faster.  Hidden from view in the far corner is a pile of cushions for students to use.  Teachers use the red chair to read books to their classes.  Picture books are on the right, fiction books, arranged by genre, are on the left.  Graphic novels, junior non-fiction and readers are on the far wall.

The best thing about the issues desk is that it has an overhang that a couple of small children can fit under.  This is not a small child, this is my tall 12-year-old son modelling for me before going to his school!

The 'Quick Picks' shelving on the right holds our early chapter books.  The bottom row and whole other side are organised by series, so students can quickly find their favourite books.  Behind this is our non-fiction area.  Currently some valuable shelving space on the far wall is covered by a TV that I use when I teach library skills.  In front of that is the OPAC, on another computer I managed to 'find' within the school.  Hopefully, if I have any money left over from our courtyard project, I will move the TV to a higher space above the shelving and use a couple of iPads for our OPACs. 

Tucked away in the far right of the non-fiction section is a cosy spot for students to sit.  In the far left is another pile of cushions and bean bags.

This is my outdoor courtyard area which has been enclosed with a plastic screen this month to weatherproof it.  The birds were also getting in and leaving their mark on the concrete, making it a less than appealing space to our students.  Given that the library is small for a school that by the end of the year has more than 800 students, I was keen to make full use of all the spaces available to me.  Fortunately I have a great Board of Trustees who approved funding to improve this area this year.

The tiered seating has been stained since this photo was taken and it will be covered in large cushions.  The other walls (in corrugated iron), and the glass doors, are in the process of being covered with a mural, which will extend round to the wood (it will have ivy painted on it).  Due to the painting in progress the area is currently out-of-bounds to students; I am so excited that we will soon have a new space to share with them.  I have lots of plans for it!

This is my office, which looks out into the library so I can keep an eye on what our classes are up to!  To be honest, this is the tidy version - I am usually fighting a losing battle with more paper that sits on my desk.

The other side of my office gets used by Esther, our awesome library assistant, for storage of books for processing.  I have put my library diploma and an award from SLANZA on the wall because people often don't believe that librarianship is a profession you can study for.  One way we can help change that attitude is to do little things like this.

I have read a number of studies showing that in any kind of library one of the most important things to patrons is seating.  I am pleased that we have such a big range of places for our students to sit.  At lunchtimes the library is usually full with students reading, using iPads and playing chess.  It is not the quiet libraries that I was brought up with but it does have a wonderful, vibrant buzz about it that makes students feel welcome.

Exciting Projects for 2016!

I have had a restful and relaxing break so far and am now recharged and ready to attack some exciting projects this year.  This will be the third year I have blogged about my work plans for the year ahead - I find it a good way to focus in on the major things I want to achieve.  This year my post coincides with the first 2016 EdBlogNZ Challenge so I will take that as a sign I should join in!  Here's what I hope to be up to this year:

• Library expansion!  FINALLY this is really happening.  Our courtyard area is going to be enclosed with an outdoor screen to make it weatherproof.  We've already had some awesome tiered seating put in and had the roof painted sky blue.  Jenna, our fantastic artist, has an awesome mural planned.  Plus I've convinced her to channel her inner Michelangelo and paint clouds on the ceiling.  After the mural the carpet will go in and then we will have a much-needed extra space for our students.

The BEFORE photo

• Makerspace.  This is the year I hope to implement a Makerspace programme.  In addition to lending Maker Kits, I'd like to use our extra space for a weekly 'making' activity, put up weekly challenges, and encourage student, teacher and community involvement (permission pending!). 

• Facebook.  Last year I wrote a post on 'Advocacy through Photojournalism'.  It was about gaining support for the library from the community, by posting photos of children with quotes from them about reading and the library.  This is the year I'll start my 'Stories from the Library' album.

• Programming/Robotics Club.  I hope to run a programming/robotics club this year.  I wouldn't consider myself an expert but I am keen to learn along with our students.  

• eBooks.  I'll be focussing on getting the teachers onboard with these.  Earlier this week I stole a couple of minutes from their Teacher Only day to quote recent research and hand everyone their usernames and passwords.  I'll also be building up our eBook collection; I hope to work with reluctant readers to find the best books to entice them with.

• Book Week.  After I attended Cathy Kennedy's session on book weeks at last year's SLANZA conference, I was keen to set a theme for our book week early and build up resources and ideas.  I'd like the theme "Spies and Detectives", which we could use to highlight the Mystery genre section in our library.  There are also lots of interesting activities around observing, creating codes, disguises etc that should be educational and lots of fun for our students. I haven't had a chance to run this past management yet though.

• 'Community' committee.  This is a new school committee that I am involved with, aimed at building further links with our community.  I am particularly interested in our digital communication and getting our community participating in Makerspace activities.

• Student Digital Leaders.  This is still up in the air but it's an exciting opportunity to build digital skills within the school.

In addition to these things I'll also be continuing to improve my book club, help with the Te Totara Times, run library skills sessions and promote the use of the book fridge.  Good thing I've rested up!

Bits and Bobs from 2015

My goal for 2015 was to increase my blogging and I doubled my posts from 2014.  I got used to reflecting on what was going on at work and the process of writing posts has helped me consolidate my thoughts and feelings about whatever I've been up to.

However, I still missed things.  I got busy, I had other things to write about, the rest of my life interfered.  So here's a catchup of the things I didn't have time to write about but wanted to.

I visited some libraries in Melbourne

Yep, confirmation of my geekiness. When I got the opportunity to accompany my husband to a conference in Melbourne (my first overseas trip in 20 years), what did I choose to do on one of the days he was at the conference?  I arranged to visit some school libraries of course!  And I dragged him to a public library, the Library at the Dock, as well.  Oh, and I took him to the launch of 'The 65 Storey Treehouse' and we were the only ones there without young children!  Melbourne is a beautiful city and I had a wonderful time sightseeing AND checking out libraries.

Awesome display from a school library

The innovative Library at the Dock

The very funny Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton

Taking a Harley Davidson sightseeing tour 

Our school went optional BYO iPad for Years 3-6

Actually, I did start a post about this so I'll return to the draft and have that ready soon.  Watch this space!

I visited some libraries in Auckland 

As the treasurer and a committee member for SLANZA Waikato/BOP I helped arrange for our members to visit some school libraries in Auckland.  We had two tours and I went on the primary school library one.  I was so pleased to visit four lovely librarians/teachers who each oversaw four very different libraries.  I want to talk more about the tour, so I guess that's another post to watch out for this year.

Lego Wall from Sunnyhills Primary

I stood down from SLANZA Waikato/BOP

This was a very difficult decision for me to make as I enjoyed being on the committee and having input into professional development in my region.  However, I had just moderated my second #LibChatNZ, all about managing information overload, and that got me thinking about my work/home life balance.  It was hard to do but everyone was incredibly supportive about me stepping down and I felt better once the decision was made.  If I want to keep implementing new ideas in my library, moderating Twitter chats, speaking at conferences and keeping up a blog then I need to make some room for my family too.

I bought a telescope, a microscope and a sewing machine!

Now I just need to finish getting them ready to lend to our parents.  I hope to do that next week and will no doubt talk about this further in another post.  

I discovered the joy of podcasts

I have a Fitbit which I love and which reminds me on a daily basis that I get substantially less exercise during my work hours than teachers do.  Discovering some great podcasts has helped me increase my walking outside of school hours.  I've been listening to TED Radio Hour, Note to Self, Pop Culture Happy Hour, Dear Hank & John, Explain Things to Me, and No Such Thing as a Fish.

My students made some Kahoot quizzes

Kahoot was fun and easy to learn.  The students loved it and then we shared our book and library quizzes with our senior classes and they loved it too.  More of these are definitely on the agenda for this year.

My amended library extension got approved!

The library extension has been in the works since 2014.  Then there were issues with concrete, followed by budget issues in 2015.  I ended up going back to the drawing board and came up with the considerably cheaper idea to enclose the courtyard in an outdoor screen so it will at least be weatherproof and I can put seating and carpet in there.  Watch out for a before and after post in a couple of months.

I made a summer reading brochure

And it was fun!  I saw the idea on the library listserv and felt it was a great way to share information about the importance of keeping up reading in the holidays, our Book Fridge, the Summer Reading Programme we run in conjunction with Hamilton City Libraries, and our eBooks.

A new junior high school is about to start

Our school started in 2008 and has ended the last few years with over 800 students.  The growth in northern Hamilton is massive, so now a new high school, Rototuna Junior High School, opens this year.  I am fascinated by this because new schools are well placed to implement new educational theories and practices.  I am pleased to say that they are having a library, one that they will share with the senior high school when it opens next year.  They are also implementing co-teaching, learning modules combining curriculum areas, and "Flight Time," which allows students to explore their interests.  I am keen to see these ideas in action.  They employed our wonderful Assistant Principal and several of our lovely teachers so I am already impressed with their good taste.

My youngest son will start there in February so I have an insider to feed me information!   The school is BYOD so we've just bought our son a Chromebook, which is a great opportunity for me to have a play with one!  Bonus!!


Have a great holiday everyone.  I hope you read some good books, put your feet up and relax.  I am working my way through all the chocolate in the house, but as penance I've also gone up the Hakarimata Summit Track.  This is a 335 metre climb up 1,349 steps.  A friend took me up, waiting patiently during my many rest stops.  I provided much amusement to my family for the next five days as I 'walked' around the house like a robot.  Ouch, my poor calf muscles weren't happy!

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.

Book Week Fun

We had a lot of fun with our recent Book Week.  We had three visiting authors, plus the Scholastic Book Fair and accompanying mouse, Geronimo Stilton.  It all culminated in a PJ day where everyone spent the day in extreme comfort.  It was tempting to have a nap actually, by then it had been a very busy week!

We did a couple of well-received displays, both of which were adapted from pictures I saved from a blog/Twitter/Pinterest...I admit my record-keeping has let me down in terms of identifying where they came from.  "Once upon a time...when we were younger" had photos of nearly all of our staff when they were at primary school along with a picture of their favourite book from back then.  It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed it when the photos came in.  Everyone was so cute!  And it turns out we have a lot of Famous Five fans.

Another display we did was a book recommendations tree.  Five well-behaved students from each class got to put their favourite book, along with their name and room, on a coloured post-it note.  At the end of Book Week I randomly picked some post-it notes and we gave those students books that Scholastic had given us for prizes.

My official job title is Library Manager/ICT Coordinator and the ICT side of my job is going to take over for the next six months or so.  I am excited by the challenges coming up - we are about to launch the school app, just ironing out a few kinks with the developer.  Next week we start to set up and trial Meraki, which is a mobile device management tool (I am the assistant, we have our IT consultant coming in thank goodness).  I am also going to be learning about our new digital signage system.  

I am lucky to have our library and resource assistant, Esther, to look after the day-to-day running of the library.  I do have a couple of library-related projects still on the agenda - implementing e-books and the building of our reading room next year.  My rather lofty plan for the room is for it to be the most interesting place in the whole school.  To do this I want to to have a theme for the room, with a giant mural that will make students go "wow" when they enter.  I will be talking with some of our senior students, who happen to be doing a building project at the moment, to see what ideas they have.  I have started a Pinterest board to keep my ideas together.  But how great would it be to have the reading room as the most desirable place in the school?

Genre-fication, Ninja Readers, eBooks and a Proposal

Even though the school year does not start until Monday I have done a whole lot of planning over the holidays (as well as opening the library to students every Monday afternoon and issuing over 1000 books!).

Here's what's on the agenda for 2014:

Genre-fication

After reading Jennifer LaGarde's article in Collected Magazine I revisited the idea of shelving by genre and just couldn't find any reason not to. Surely anything we can do to help our students find more of the books they like to read is a good idea.  I found an excellent website by Mrs.Readerpants that gives lots of information about the process of shelving by genre.  She also has a fun genre quiz that I am in the middle of adapting for a NZ primary school.

I worked my way through which genres I wanted (ten of them) and then had fun choosing spine label stickers for them.  On advice from NZ library guru Miriam I approached Book Protection Products, used some of their spine labels and also got them to make up some of my own.  I found a great site for copyright-free clipart called Pixabay that had just what I needed.  I can't wait to see the finished products.

      

Ninja Readers

I started a book club last year for our Year 6 students and while it went OK it didn't meet the visions in my head.  So on to bigger and better things this year.  First, I chose a new name.  I thought it would be empowering for last year's members to choose their own name but then they came up with "Very Important Readers" and I hated it!  I want my book club members to be brave and explore new books so I came up with "Ninja Readers".  Hopefully I'll convince my husband to make a logo for me, but I've had him doing other tasks - more on that later.  

I'm opening the club to Year 5 & 6 students this year and will run two divisions, either by year level or gender.  Given I'm genre-fying I thought I would work through each of the genres with my book club.  I'll start each division with a different genre and give them two weeks and then they can swap genres and recommend books to the other division.  I bought some little notebooks for them to record their reading, based on ideas from Donalyn Miller's "Reading in the Wild" (LOVE this book!).  I also thought I could give them a challenge to read three books from each genre and then they could earn a genre sticker to go in a "challenges" section at the back of their notebook.  Thanks to Donalyn I also have a lot of ideas for conversations around books that I can have with my Ninja Readers. 

e-Books

Thanks to a large parent donation at the end of last year we will be venturing into e-books this year.  I'll have to wait until I can pin down our IT guy so I haven't done much thinking around this just yet.

Proposal

The length of a library visit for each class was reduced in Term 4 last year from 40-45 mins to 25-30 mins.  This was due to an ever increasing number of classrooms in our school.  So, I asked to speak to the Board of Trustees and proposed that we expand the size of the library so that it is possible to have two classes in there at once, and therefore be able to return to 40-45 minute visits.  This took a huge amount of time as I prepared a slideshow, visited our wonderful National Library Adviser in order to get statistics about other school library sizes, and spoke nicely to my husband so that he could make 3D computer models of what the library would look like.  The BOT were impressed and have asked me to investigate further!

So, four big projects and I'm excited to get started on all of them.  And just to prove I did have some relaxation time in the holidays, here's a photo from our lovely holiday in Napier.