Where do we purchase our books from?

We are pretty busy in our school library and ideally it would be great to have the time to stroll through the stacks of a bookshop and fill a basket with books.

But rather we purchase our books from a range of companies that are happy to work with us.

Bookstores

The local Dymocks is happy to take school purchase orders and package up orders for us. The odd purchase comes from Readings and sometimes Robinsons bookshop.

Book Tubs

Lamont Books drop off tubs of books for us to look through, they also do a high quality standing order that we get every term. We generally get the books for a number of days and then they get picked up again.

[source]

We also got some books dropped off from VIPA books, who are local and we are happy to support them.

Standing Orders

We get a standing order from Lamonts every term. These books come with a detailed book review and we are guaranteed that they are "Young Adult" books. Lamont seem to be able to pick all the award nominees every year, so when the CBCA awards come around, we have normally had the books in the circulation before then.

[source]

Online Purchases

We can also purchase through Wheelers for physical and also electronic books and audiobooks, we get invoiced for payment.

So a range of strategies are used by our library to purchase books.

#freebookmarks for your #schoollibrary Reading Bookmarks

We knocked out some new bookmarks for the end of term.

Lots of borrowing happening and the cactus bookmarks were very popular, so I threw these together with some stock Canva images. Students seem to like the bold colours and images.

[source]

I normally print about 10 pages worth of bookmarks each time.

[source]

Download the bookmarks here. If you enjoy my free bookmarks then let me know in a comment.

Library and Information Week: Fake News Challenge

We decided to do a Fake News Challenge as part of 2021 Library and Information Week.

Each lunchtime students could collect the slip for the day and then at the end of the day we announced winners where they could collect lolly pack. 

[source]

Some of the answers were well thought out and then others .. well they were not!

[source]

We had a good giggle at the answers and had great conversations with kids at lunchtime on how to look up information online, triangulate answers and frame a good answer.

Library and Information Week: Scrambled Poetry

I'm always on the lookout for activities for Write Club to do that are a bit different and hands on.

So I copied some magnetic poetry words onto coloured paper and make some offline kits for students to play with during "Library and Information Week".

It did take me an evening of cutting out the words for the packs, but we made 6 different coloured kits for lunchtime activities.

[source]

It was a great activity, and the kids took photo's of what they had created so that they could go away and do some more writing from the inspiration.

[source]

If you wanted to do it online, here are some links:

• Magnetic Poetry online
  http://magneticpoetryplayonline.com/original/
• Magnetic poetry online via Google Docs
  https://shakeuplearning.com/magneticpoetry/
• Build your own magnetic poetry activity using Google Draw
  https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-now/2018/10/12/build-your-own-online-magnetic-poetry-kit-with-google-drawing

#freebookmarks for your #schoollibrary Cactus Reading Bookmarks

These cactus reading bookmarks have been very popular in the school library. 

We make them in house using Canva and then print them off on the thickest card we can feed through the copier.

[source]

Click here to download the file and print for your library

Year 8 English: Genre Tasting activity

The Library Team had a request for "something different" from the Year 8 English teachers. 

Normally we would talk to them at the start of a wider reading session and talk about the new books on offer, some of these would be picked up for the session, but often most students would go to the area or genre that they like every week. 

The idea was to expose students to more books than they would normally look at. After some discussion we came up with the idea of tasting and then came the placemats and bookmarks.

The tables looked lovely with the placemats and bookmarks!

At each table we had a sign with the name of the genre, a QR code to the catalogue for that genre and a selection of 4-6 books. We opted not to list the books on the sign, as each class might be presented with different books. We had six Year 8 classes to cater for!

[source]

Each student got a bookmark and then they had about 5-10 minutes at each table to read the blurbs and then decide which book they would want to read in that genre. Students were encouraged to write down the name of the book and then they could follow up at a later date.

[source]

At the end of the lesson, students could borrow one of the books from the tables to take home and read.

Some of the English teachers collected the bookmarks to have a look at what the kids had chosen. You could always do this activity with a form to collect which books interested the kids as well. However we did get some great feedback from students in regards to the physical bookmark that they could fill out and take with them.

If you want a copy of my genre tasting files (canva), just shoot me a message konstantkaos via gmail.

Celebrating Library Lovers Day

February 14th is Library Lovers Day.

It is the chance to celebrate your local library and in our school library, we were meant to have our celebration on the 15th, but we went into lockdown for a week. So we are having it on the 24th February.

[source]

"Blind date with a book" was displayed and students encouraged to take home a book and read it based on the brief description that we put on the front of the books. We wrapped 80+ books. 

They were borrowed out to our Library Lovers Day account, so that if students were searching for them, they wouldn't get confused by seeing a book that was meant to be on the shelf.

[source]

We created some flair to create bunting and some student voice slips to get feedback from students on the day.

[source]

We bought 100 packets of sweets from Melted Candy to give out to kids at the circulation desk if they borrowed a book. Contact your local confectioner directly and ask them what they can do. It was a whole lot easier than trying to run around shops!

[source]

Here are the completed student voice cards, and if you want to see more photo's the school's instagram posted some.

[source]

It was such a popular event, with all the books borrowed out by the end of lunchtime. We also had the Principal come down and chat to students about their reading as well.

Unwrapping our 3D Printers

We got our three 3D Printers delivered at the start of February and we started to put them through their paces.

[source]

We ended up getting some FlashForge inventor2 machines and a FlashForge Guider 2 for ABS printing. Realistically if I had an open chequebook I would have gotten three Ultimaker units, but we all have budgets in our School Libraries - right?

Firstly, a print off of Benchy the tug boat. A diagnostic print designed to test the thresholds of your printer.

One of our science teachers wanted an Apollo Astronaut printed for his Year 10 STEM class.

[source]

One of our tech guys wanted a Baby Yoda printed off.

[source]

We also experimented a bit with Pi Cookie Cutters. I love the idea of kids designing their own cookie cutters and then using them as part of a food tech project.

[source]

I am putting links to 3D Printing resources up on my Library Makerspace Libguides page.

School Library Social Capital Goals for 2021

As we start our 2021 in Australia, it is good practice to set you and your team some goals for 2021. 

They might be to increase senior readership or increase understanding of the research process, but it is also important to continue to build our social capital within our school community. We can get so bogged down in what we are doing that we become invisible because we are so busy.

Building social capital is also about building reputation and positioning our school library as the essential service that we are.

The majority of teachers in our school
don't see how hard the Library staff work
to keep the curriculum resources accessible by everyone.
[source]

So consider the following ideas as possible goals for your school library.

We will touch base with EVERY pre-service teacher in our school to promote the role of the school library and library science professionals.

An easy one to measure, what % of pre-service teachers did we speak to? Create a pack of pamphlets advocating the school library and the role of how library professionals might support them with their teaching . How can you help them resource their lessons. Return on investment for this goal isn't one that you will see, but perhaps the pre-service teachers will develop an appreciation for school libraries and will engage with them when they get their first contract.

We will make sure that the school library is "on the radar" by being present or being on the agenda of every curriculum meeting in the school.

The agenda item should ask for a "call to action". The completion of a survey or something to add value to that curriculum area. Regular updates to my team on what is happening in each learning area. Popping book pamphlets into pigeon holes isn't going to engage teachers to engage with your service.

When you are a one-man-band this can be difficult, but how can you use curriculum meetings to engage with teachers and identify area where the school library can help them?

The School Library team will continue to develop their social capital by working collaboratively on knowing our teachers and their teaching and learning needs.

How can you build school library organisational knowledge of what teachers are teaching and where their needs are? Do we need to use a customer relationship database to keep tabs on our conversations or sometime more simplistic like a google doc? How can we build our social capital in the various curriculum areas? How can your team address this goal?

I am sure that discussions with your team will uncover many other social capital goals that you can engage with.

Good luck for 2021.

How did we build School Library social capital in a covid-lockdown environment?

Reflecting back on 2020, it has been interesting to look at my role and how it has grown throughout the year. 

It was only five years ago that I was just starting out as a Teacher Librarian, however I did have 20 years of teaching and leadership roles behind me. I was blessed to find a great School Library leadership role with a fabulous team in a school with a Principal that is supportive of what we are trying to achieve.

It has been interesting to watch the profession and how it has changed throughout 2020. 

School Library leadership roles, that had once been held by teacher librarians have been watered down into Education Support roles, but they still have curriculum development requirements tacked onto the job description. Those schools that liquidated their TL roles the year before found they didn't have any support from their library staff during lockdown. Many of those school libraries have just disappeared from the "radar" of educators in their schools.

I was adamant that in 2020, I was going to promote my role as a teacher librarian and what we are doing in the school library. 

A school specific school library Instagram wasn't going to happen easily, but I wanted to seperate what I was doing on my @konstantkaos Instagram from my active school library work. 

@LovemySchoolLibrary was formed. Instagram is a great way of documenting what you are doing in your school library and celebrating what you are achieving. Using tools such as Prinkl to print out posters which show what you have achieved throughout the year.

One goal of 2020 was to set up my own "school library" instagram.
@lovemyschoollibrary

When the first lockdown hit us, I was adamant that the School Library would not become invisible. 

Library staff are good at just hunkering down and getting the work done, but when things move online you tend to become invisible. Invisible departments can't argue for more money or resources come budget time.

So what did we do:

1. We set up a Libguide for the school community.
2. We set up a weekly newsletter for staff which then evolved into a Libguide newsletter.
3. We made sure that we were included in the fortnightly newsletter that went home to parents.
4. We set up a Borrow Bag "click and collect" system for students so they could borrow physical books.
5. We made sure that the wider reading experience went online so that students would continue to have contact with the school library.

I think that this promotion of library services and development of social capital held us in good stead when it came to capital work applications at the end of the year. 2021 finds us setting up our own Tinker or Makerspace and hopefully giving our Library Foyer and circulation desk a make-over.

The "Students need School Libraries" website invited feedback from school libraries on what they did during Covid. Check out our response.

As we move forward into 2021, what will your social capital goals be? What will you put in place to make yourself more visible to the school community?