#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.

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Click here to download the file and print for your library

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.
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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?

Street Library Update

The completed street library is a bit of a monster, we wanted to be able to move it around the school. So the base actually has bricks in it to keep it stable and lockable castors.

We had a design competition during the CBCA "book week" celebration and worked with the Visual Communication teacher to write up a design brief so she could use it as a task in class. If you want a copy of the entry form, just get in touch via twitter @konstantkaos.

We ended up getting about 15 entries which I thought was good given everything else that was going on in the school at the time.

 

The winning designs were two year 10 girls and they have worked together to morph their designs together for a final design.

From Instagram [source]

I can't wait to see what they end up doing!

Setting up a Street Library for your School Library

 We had been bouncing around ideas for how to dispose of our weeded books for a while.

A plastic container in the corner of the school library with a sign saying "free stuff" just wasn't cutting it. Messy, disorganised and a missed opportunity to promote what we do in the school library. I had discussed a few times with maintenance the idea of re-fashioning an old bookcase like a house where we could place it in front of the Library as a point of interest. But the idea was clunky and didn't offer more than another place to dump weeded books and rubbish.

With covid-19 lockdown and cabin fever, I found myself exploring our local streets and came across a street library in one of our local parks. Excitedly we took along an old Dan Brown book and exchanged it for a more interesting book by Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.

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We incorporated the idea of finding a local street library into our wider reading presentations and many students recognised what they were and were excited to exchange a book.

Why would you get a 'street library' for your school?

We started to investigate the possibility of getting a street library for our school:

• We can use it as a promotional tool for School Library events. For example: CBCA Book Week.
• We can move it throughout the school and have it present at events with weeded books, promotional bookmarks and postcards. For example: During orientation week for Year 7's or leading into the holidays in the staffroom. Bookmarks promote what the library is doing.
• To make books more accessible to students and staff who might not visit the school library for other than photocopying facilities. For example: In the VCE area, promoting age specific books to Year 11's and 12's.

With Covid-19 we will have hand sanitiser inside it for students who are mindful of germs.

How would you go about organising it?

You can buy the flat packs and stands from Street Library Australia, but our maintenance team welcomed a fun project and knocked up a box from marine ply. It will be mounted on a stand with lockable castors and handles to move it around the school.

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Maintenance are painting the street library in weathershield paint and we were thinking of holding a competition to see if a student/s would like to paint the street library with their bookish designs.

Students can submit their designs via an online classroom or email and there might be a book voucher involved as part of the prize pack. Maintenance are going to mix us some paint pots of weathershield of primary colours so that the students can paint their designs.

My home street library

Of course, this tale would not be complete without sharing our own 'Kammelot' Street Library, (not a spelling mistake, a play on our last names). 

During lockdown I convinced my father-in-law to make me a street library from an old bookcase and we have bought the plates and are going to register it with Street Library Australia.

As a holiday activity, my daughter painted some of her own designs on it.

We are all excited about including some weeded books from our own library in the street library and seeing how it goes!

Has your local community got their own street library?

Our Library Newsletter moves online

For Term 2, the LRC team put together a text based newsletter.

Distributed via email it was just a list of links and ideas - low tech!

At the end of Term 2, we did a survey with staff to see what they thought of the format and frequency and upon reflection and discussion with the LRC team, re-invented the newsletter transferring it to our Libguides platform.

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As a team we contribute to the newsletter over a two week period and when it is full distribute it with an email which lists the things that we can't put on the website, like student achievements in reading and writing.

So check it out if you want, let us know what you think!

WASLA Article - Supercharge your school library with co-curricular clubs

I was very excited to see my article for WASLA "in the flesh", printed on the page. 

Online journals are great and accessible, but having something in your hands is just magical.

If you would like to check out what I wrote and give me some feedback, the article is up on my Publications page.

Lawson, M (2020). Supercharge your Library with Co-curricular Clubs. IC3. Professional Journal Of The WA School Library Association, vol 10.(No. 2 July), 3-8. (link)

Covid-19 Borrow Bags in the School Library

We packed another seven Borrow Bags this week for students who wanted to still borrow physical books from our collection, but who were not learning on campus. We decided not to use the term "Click and Collect" as many retailers are using this term and we wanted to emphasis "Borrowing".

There has been a great deal of discussion about Borrow Bags on the various mailing lists and Facebook groups so I thought I would document our process. I am sure that there are so many ways of doing this, but this is what worked for my team.

To start with, safety is our first priority. Not just physical safety, but mentally as well. Students and parents both wanted to know that we had taken appropriate precautions when dealing with the books.

How did we do it?

Students would reserve their books via the catalogue and also email us to say they wanted a Borrow Bag packed for them. In the email to us, students could request a mystery pack in a particular genre and also ask for books to support the Victorian Premiers Reading Challenge.

In our first lockdown in Victoria, Australia, we had one student who read through a selection of Novellas and Graphics Novels and she completed the Victorian Premiers Reading Challenge before the end of Term 2. Bravo!

We looked at using a Google Form for this, but often we would have to email back and forth with the student letting them know what was or wasn't available. A google form offered no advantage (for us) over email.

During our first lockdown, Term 2, 2020 we had lots of students interested in collecting a Borrow Bag. The interest petered off towards the end of lockdown, however the girls that were borrowing were grabbing 4-6 books each. We had two staff members come into the library on the Monday and Thursday to create and then distribute the Borrow Bags.

Each bag had a little lolly pack with a Chupa-Chump and some fruit chews in a little cute plastic bag with an "Enjoy your reading" label on them. A few students were very excited by this surprise. We also included bookmarks and some feedback/book review sheets as well.

A few button badges found their way in as well. These were received well! I have uploaded one of the button badge printables to my blog for your downloading pleasure.

Managing the Information

After creating a "group" spreadsheet of all the Borrow Bag recipients and their books while we were working from home, we printed off "receipts" that we could use to mark off whether a book was available or not.

When we came onsite, we printed off the receipts, collected the books and then folded it strategically. This was then used to label the bags. We managed to initially grab the bags from the Marketing office. They were left over from an event. But as we did more and more Borrow Bags, we finally just bought some from Officeworks, a business stationary retailer in Australia.

We constructed the bags on the Monday and then they were collected on the Thursday. Allowing three days between us handling them and the kids collecting them. The guidelines given to us by the school was to clean and then quarantine books for three days before shelving.

When students were collecting their Borrow Bags they were encouraged to return any overdue books. We suspended overdue notices during lockdown, but encouraged them to return books. 

So throughout Lockdown 1.0 this is what we did. During Lockdown 2.0 it might be a bit different as Year 11/12 students are onsite. Students will be able to pick their Borrow Bags up from the Library if they have been temperature checked a the front office. But we will still have to follow our quarantine procedure.

Please comment ...

This was the way that we did it, how did you do it?

[writeclub] NaNoWriMo Wrap up

It is December, and NaNoWriMo is a wrap!

Out of all of the girls, we ended up getting nine completed stories handed in with the word count totalling 39,500 words.

[source]

I am beyond excited to read these stories in their entirety.  We had romance, dragons, parallel universes and monsters in forests!

What worked well?

• Every lunchtime throughout November we had a sign on a table in the Learning Commons set aside for the NaNoWriMo girls and they could eat their lunches at the table.
• We set up my mother's old typewriter, which is about 50 years old as a prop and the students loved to type with it. "Where is the delete button", they would ask!
• Every few lunchtimes we had a bag of lollies to share.
• Every few lunchtimes we had quote cards for them to pick up.
• Every few sessions we took a word count log to see how they were progressing.
• We celebrated the half way mark with chocolates.
• We encouraged the students to print out drafts of their work so that we could proof as they go and offer advice.

What didn't work well?

• We tried to bring in other English teachers into help with the proofing, but given that it is a busy time of the year it didn't work too well.
• We always had one or two girls who loved the notion of writing but then produced nothing.
• Not every student wanted to share their writing along the way, so some of the final drafts are a bit rough around the edges.

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They loved the idea of an anthology and come Sunday night at 7pm I had nine stories in my inbox. If I can get them edited and proofed by next week I will put them together into a booklet that the girls can go and get copied and bound if they want to.

[writeclub] Day 12 NaNoWriMo breaking though writers block

It is nearly half way through the NaNoWriMo challenge and several of the students have hit the writers block wall.

So lots of talk at Write Club today about how to punch through that wall:

• Building good writing habits, 
• using the kitchen timer to drop everything and just write for 20 minute,
• giving yourself permission to jump around the story rather than write from start to end in chronological order.

The students have so far written over 20 thousand words combined with an average of 1800 words per story. I think that it is a great effort!

[source]

I've been keeping them motivated by providing gummy snakes and/or bears and every few day I put our another motivational quote card for the kids to collect and decorate their writing space with.

[writeclub] Day 1 #Nanowrimo in the Learning Commons

Day 1 NaNoWriMo and we originally had three girls interested in doing the writing competition.
Something happened and we now have 8.

[source]

A sign in sheet, some gummy bears, quote card and button badges for all. An old typewriter was also set up for students to tinker on; I think that it added to the ambiance!

The lunchtime was spent writing the first section of their 3,000 stories. Here is a summary of the ones that I read at the end of the teaching day:

• A World War III spy thriller with a fortune teller.
• A girl who lives in a bland world discovers colour.
• A girl falls down a portal and travels back in time to meet her grandmother.

In Australia we have a four day long weekend, which coincides with a horse race on Tuesday. I am hoping that many of the students will find the time to do some writing over the weekend and I will have some more entertaining stories to read on Wednesday of next week.

#freebookmarks for your #schoollibrary - Halloween

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Using the frames in Canva, we imported some Halloween Colouring in sheets into the frames. The result was some Halloween colouring in bookmarks. Something different for 2019. The black border makes them very easy to splice in our guillotine.

Card was 280gsm through our photocopier.

[click to download a large copy]

Enjoy!

Reading Circle Bookmarks

[source]

The bookmarks are a result of unpacking Dr Margaret Merga’s book “Reading Engagement for Tweens and Teens”.

Early in the book she talks about the types of influences that impact on teen reading engagement or the “will to read”. The Reading Circle format at our school is part of encouraging a shared social habit in reading and encouraging students to talk about what they do and don't like in a novel. But that can only happen when we model good social engagement habits.

We hold our Reading Circles twice a term and in between reading circles we do reading conversations/observations to find out what students are reading and how they are tracking.

Bookmarks were made in Canva to try and focus the students when we do Reading Circles.

[write club] NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month

November is nearly here, which means that NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us (National Novel Writing Month). 

I've tried this a few times with writing clubs over the years. Sometimes the kids embrace the concept, other times they don't. This year with the aid of Canva, I decided to make a NaNoWriMo Calendar for our writers. 

Printed off in A3, they can pin it up on their writing desk and at the end of each day record their progress each day.

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Here is a downloadable copy of the calendar.

[click image to download]

Our first task next week is to have a think about characters and plot, so that we can start writing on the 1st of November!

Executive function skills and the motivation to read

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Some of the comments that are coming back from the Year 7 cohort about reading is that the 'Drop Everything and Read' wider reading campaign is giving them permission to read.

To me that sounds funny; why would you need permission to read? Why can't you just enjoy the process?

Intrinsic motivation is an interesting concept. For many of us, getting up in the morning isn't driven by the intrinsic motivation to start the day at a decent time. It is driven by the fact that we have work to go to, or kids to get up or animals to feed. The routine of our life is the motivating factor. For many of us, when those factors are removed, the morning routine falls apart. As adults we have developed those executive function skills to get up and get the jobs done that need to be done.

But for teenagers, many are still developing their executive function skills that drive them to set independent goals, meet self-set deadlines and also keep themselves organised.

For many years I have noticed a decline in the development of executive function skills amongst students. The school diary was often the mechanism to teach them these skills. Assignment dates would be set, tasks would be broken apart, times would be set to study for tests. Once upon a time we would help students create homework timetables and meet with them weekly to talk about their homework habits. Yes it was hard work by the pastoral teachers and parents, but you are not born with organisational skills; systems have to be developed that work for you. Part of this process was also learning to talk to teachers about completing tasks on time, such as 'role playing' how to ask for an extension on a piece of work.

With the large scale integration of Learning Management Systems into our schools, this skill is being super-seeded by looking at an electronic calendar that your teacher has populated for you with due dates. There is no processing or negotiation involved, the dates are just there ...

Online tasks are automatically given due dates and often the system doesn't allow for students to break down these tasks over a series of dates to suit their learning needs. Most electronic calendars do not allow for notes or reflections to be inserted. Perhaps the simple physical act of recording homework offline in a handwritten diary might have more benefits than meets the eye.

So is there a correlation between executive function skill and the motivation to read?

We have been recording our Drop everything and read data for 7 weeks now. We can see that the kids who under-achieve in many subjects are not good at reading regularly and those that are good at reading regularly achieve higher marks in their classroom tasks. Perhaps we didn't need 7 weeks of data to tell us this ...

But what about their executive function skills? Is there a link?

Does the simple act of learning how to plan, increase the likelihood of finding time to read recreationally?

Perhaps this is the next research project for me!

Melbourne Writers Festival 2019 [Schools Edition]

It has been a few years since I have attended the Melbourne Writers Festival. This year we took a group of girls from both the Write Club and the Book Club into city.

Getting our bookshop fix on at Readings at the State Library.

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Do Something About It

The Year 9-12 girls joined me for this panel session talking about how to be an advocate and how to write about advocacy. On our panel was three wonderful women; writer Laniyuk, poet Elena Gomez and writer and critic Sonia Nair.

The group explored their individual motivations on writing, how to be an accessibility advocate (or an accomplice) and how to use social media to "do something about it". Our girls were taken with the idea of an "accomplice" and how they might be able to advocate for causes that are important to them. There was talk about the importance of solidarity and that it involves a lot of listening and learning before taking action. In a culture with information and compassion fatigue; how do we cut through all of that to make our voices heard?

Goodbye, World

Our second session required some travel between Treasury Place and the State Library and we were overjoyed to find out that the speaker of this session Lynette Noni had taken out the 2019 Gold Inky Award last night for her book 'Whisper'.

Meeting back up with the rest of the group, this talk was all about Young Adult novels; the writing process, where to find inspiration and how to weave the story. Lynette spoke passionately about the world that she had created in the 'Medoran Chronicles' and how her characters were her best friends. From how to work out character names to techniques in plotting she kept the group engaged for the 45 minutes and we kept on talking about ideas that she generated for the rest of the afternoon.

Next Year?

Even though the Melbourne Writers Festival School's Program runs all day, we found that just the two sessions worked well with our students. Enough to get ideas from but not too much to exhaust us. The debrief in the Learning Commons when we got back to school was enlightening and hopefully a few of them have some ideas about where to take their writing.

Why your #schoollibrary is more like a garden than a building ...

Prakash Nair presented one of the plenary sessions on the first day at Edutech. His presentation was titled "Space for Learning" and he posed the idea that we need to "educate like a gardener not a carpenter".

Based on Alison Gopnick's book "The Carpenter and the Gardener", Prakash spoke about the mindset of the Gardener (being effective) and Carpenter (being efficient).

• The Efficient Carpenter focuses on building their craft so that projects can be done quicker, less cost and less effort. Many of these are what we would call quantitative measures.
• The Effective Gardener referring to the planting of the garden according to quality, relevancy and timeliness, in tune with the seasons. Many of these are qualitative measures, harder to measure.

The Carpenter educator is controlling, hierarchical and standardised and the Gardener educator is empowering, distributed, flexible and personalised.

Prakash's powerpoint slide courtesy of Bec West

He drew parallels with the 'cell like' structures of the old school environment and the organic flowing flexible environment of the newer learning spaces that you might find in newer school buildings. Building on the theme that as educators we need to be more like a gardener rather than a carpenter.

Listen to Prakash Nair talk about  Learning Spaces.

Of course conference goers expressed their delight at this new concept on twitter; even though the idea of free range learners isn't a new one and has been brought out many times by 'progressive' presenters over the years. Back in 1998 Jamie McKenzie was talking about free range students and how connected learning would release students from the learning confines of the traditional industrial classroom.

Relating it back to our School Library

During Prakash's presentation he spoke about a school having a "DaVinci Studios" or "project centres" or even "learning commons" spaces. A place where students can work on their personalised learning plan with resources at their fingertips. I reflected back on a blog post that I did in 2011, asking the question when "Library" became a dirty word. With the reinvention of library spaces in these new future forward school buildings, many schools are also throwing out the concept of teacher librarians.

Our libraries are like a garden, we plant seeds of knowledge and ideas in the minds of students and try and nurture them with an environment conducive to learning. In our learning commons, we have hot drinks and cookies for homework clubs, we rearrange furniture for events and always respond with a "yes". Our goal is to create the best learning environment.

Whilst unpacking this keynote, it reminded me of the Kipling poem "The Glory of the Garden". Kipling talks about a beautiful English garden but then as the poem goes on, it talks about the importance of the gardeners and how gardens don't really grow unless they are properly cultivated.

Is your library being properly cultivated? Is it tended by weekend gardeners (teachers without library qualifications) or landscape gardeners (teacher librarians).

References

Gopnik, A. (2016). The gardener and the carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children. 

http://alisongopnik.com/TheGardenerAndTheCarpenter.htm

A call to arms; the Pygmalion Affect and the School Library

When we reflect back on our school years, the teachers that we remember are the ones that lifted us up. That see us for more than what we are, the encouraging words of Mrs Tessarge in Year 8 History set me on my path to study Arts at University. But the teachers that were strict had their place as well. They struck fear into students. They demanded that you try hard and their expectations were indisputable. Everyone knew that Mr Jamison was not to be toyed with when it came to the correct uniform! He had drawn the line in the sand and he never wavered from it.

But if we blend the two, then we have an encouraging teacher that sets high expectations (Spiegel, 2012) and these teachers make a positive impact on student performance (Ellison, 2015). A colleague at a former school had the amazing ability to lift students up and expect more from them at the same time. He didn't just pay lip service to the "I'm amazing" Lorna Jane generation, he made sure that his comments were justified and genuine; "You are amazing because .....". 

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I've been reading a lot about leadership in organisations and as a result reflecting back on the leaders that brought the best out in me over the years. I came across this article on "Pygmalion in Library Leadership" (Matthews, 2012) where he talks about the habit of Librarians, and also teachers, to say "I'm just a Librarian" or "I'm just a teacher". In order for Teacher Librarians to take their rightful place in schools as curriculum engineers, they need to walk the talk. They are not "just teacher librarians", they are curriculum designers, learning engineers, motivators, organisational specialists, information disseminators.

The role of a Teacher Librarian in schools is going through a massive change at the moment.

When I first started teaching the TL was the quiet Librarian that helped those who came to them. The Library was quiet and the curriculum support was understated. As technology disruptors were introduced into schools, it has taken a while for Teacher Librarians to find their feet again in this changing educational landscape.  Only a few school library leaders managed to make this transition work for them; esteemed educators such as Suzette Boyd who worked at Methodist Ladies' College in the 1990's and wrote a book called "The Connected Library".

Now, our Teacher Librarians need to be fearless. We know that there is a direct link between a properly functioning school library and academic achievement, however schools are decreasing their funding of fully qualified Teacher Librarians.  We need a "call to arms"; we need to be proactive, supportive, researchers and enablers of evidenced based curriculum practices. Others will treat you the way that you perceive yourself (Matthews, 2018) and Teacher Librarians need to champion the good work that both they and their teaching teams are doing in schools. They need to "brand themselves" and carry the flag for curriculum innovation in their schools.

Don't be silent; a squeaky wheel gets the grease.


References:

Boyd, Suzette (2006). The connected library : a handbook for engaging users. Utopia Press, Hawthorn West, Vic

Ellison, K. (2015). Being Honest About the Pygmalion Effect. Retrieved from http://discovermagazine.com/2015/dec/14-great-expectations

Matthews, S. (2012). Pygmalion in Library Leadership. Retrieved from https://21stcenturylibrary.com/2012/09/07/pygmalion-in-library-leadership/

Spiegel, A. (2012). Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/09/18/161159263/teachers-expectations-can-influence-how-students-perform

Additional Information:

Rosenthal's Experiment and the Pygmalion Effect. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/7arosenthal/home

#Freebookmarks for your #schoollibrary Animal Bookmarks

Some bookmarks that I made on Canva. You should be able to click on the images print them off on A4 cardstock.

Did your students enjoy them? Ours did!

3 things to encourage Structured thinking in the Learning Commons

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This article on Structured Thinking popped up in my feed and although it was published last year I wanted to reflect a bit on what we are doing in our Learning Commons to structure the thinking of our students.

1. Maintaining an up-to-date curated Libguide collection which supports both content and skill-based learning.
   For example, when we create a libguide for Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, we also include Skills based pages to encourage students to Annotating their text or draft a comparatie analysis essay.
   
2. Creating Research Scaffolds to support the curriculum and structure the research process and encourage deep inquiry learning.
   These research scaffolds are used from Year 7 to Year 12, both in a generic format but also a customised form. As an A3 sheet, they can be used to show evidence of the research process and development of thinking on a topic.
   
3. Being available for students as a sounding board. We can proof read essays, listen to oral presentations or help students get their head arond a topic. Our Learning Commons is a "yes" environment, we will do anything (within reason) to assist students to further their learning.

I am sure that there us much more that we can do to help students structure their thinking, but this is where we are at the moment!

References:

Schwartz, K. (2017). When Kids Have Structure for Thinking, Better Learning Emerges. MindShift. Retrieved 26 February 2017, from https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/31/when-kids-have-structure-for-thinking-better-learning-emerges/