Have you ever felt that you would love to do some of the ‘whizzy’ things you see featured on Heart, like the interactive library guide featured below, but you have no idea where to start?  Then this course, 23 things, is for you.  You can work at your own pace, and it is based around trying one new library related Web 2 tool a week.  Register on the page, and you will soon be creating your own ‘whizzy’ content.  Enjoy!

As you are thinking about making library guides for incoming students, how about making them a bit more interactive and embedding them on your blog?  A good example of this type is guide is this one from Frances at Stromness Academy:

Voices for the Library, a public library campaigning group, is keen to gather ideas for what a 21st century library service should look like.  As school librarians are experts in the field of teenage readers – as well as usually being keen library users ourselves – our views on public libraries would be invaluable.  So please follow the link to their site, and join the Facebook page, to join the very interesting discussions taking place around this subject.

Niamh Sharkey, the award winning illustrator and children’s novelist, is to be Ireland’s new Children’s Laureate.  She takes over from Siobhan Parkinson.  For more information about Niamh and the Children’s Laureate, please visit this page.

School librarian John Iona won the World Book Day 2012 competition in the TES. Competing against teachers, he won the prize for an innovative resource about the performance poet BRIES.  See more details about John and the competition here 

John says: “This lesson was put together as an introduction to the poet BREIS, who visited the school to perform for years 7 and 8 in celebration of World Book Day.  Learning objective for the lesson was to get pupils to think about poetry, and the way in which poetry can come alive when read aloud.  The lesson was delivered by English teachers during year 8 English lessons, and myself during year 7 Library lessons.”

John has kindly agreed to provide us with the powerpoint and the lesson plan which he used, and these can be accessed in the Best Practice document folder to the right of this page.

If you are a school librarian in the UK, why not join in this innovative idea for a book race?  It is loosely based on an idea called the New Zealand Book race.  School Librarian Andrea Hassan from Norfolk has devised the race, and this is what she says:

“Each participating school will choose two titles to read in one half-term. At the end of the half-term they will post one copy of each book to the next school in the circle, and receive two books from the school before them. The cycle repeats, with different groups of students if necessary, until each school gets their original books back. The reason for having two titles is in case students have read one, or in case boys and girls don’t like one of the choices. This means that the choices could come from any of the genres including romance and horror.  I will design a review sheet to accompany the books that will include name and location of school, date book was read, student’s first name or initials, age and one line about what they thought of it. The aim is to start the circle in September 2012 with year 7s and/or 8s (11-13 years olds).  It doesn’t matter if you get a handful of interested students or a hundred as long as it’s fun and not too much effort!  Also, this is designed for the majority of students to access as there are usually lots of specific activities for SEN and G&T. There is no reason why a circle could not work for specific abilities though!  If you would like to give it a go then please email me asap so I have an idea of numbers in the first instance.”

If you are interested in this great idea, please email Andrea: ahassan6nrn@nsix.org.uk

Following the publication of the Ofsted report on Moving English Forward  there has been much discussion on the online internet group SLN about what this means for school librarians.  At the London Association of Teachers of English last weekend led by an HMI Inspector, it was emphasised that school libraries would feature in inspections of whole school reading cultures where literacy was felt to be an issue.  If attainment in English at GCSE and AL English are high, then the library will not need to be included.  What will happen, I wonder, to schools who have problems with literacy, and don’t have school libraries any more?  Is this finally the resurgence of school libraries that we have all been waiting for?  What is your opinion – does this Ofsted report bring it any closer?

Are you getting resources ready for your new 6th Form intake in September?  If so, you might like to look in the new folder on the right in the Box files, called ’6th form work for memory sticks’.  This file came out of a discussion around Karen Hans’s article on Heart, and her mention of giving the 6th Form memory sticks full of resources for the upcoming year.  Karen has kindly allowed some of her resources to be uploaded, and others have also contributed their ideas.  Please feel free to use these resources, and to contact me with any others you feel could be included here.  Librarians are amongst the most generous people I know with their resources, usually freely sharing with others, and I would like to thank Karen and others for their generosity in making this resource available to us all.

Do you get either of these great free reading promotion magazines in your primary or secondary schools? Read It is for primary schools and Booked for secondary schools – in the UK only.  The publishers state that “If any school Secondary or Primary wish to sign up they just simply need to send an E-mail to:info@publishedworld.com with an address and contact name of where to send the magazines to. Alternatively you could phone us on 01293 763342. We also need you to provide us with the number of magazines you wish to receive – usually for Primary Schools we send out enough copies for every student, teacher and extra for their Library and for Secondary schools we send out enough copies for years 7, 8 and 9 and also extra for teachers and the library if needed.Regretfully, we cannot send any sample copies in the post but you can go to www.publishedworld.com and download all of the previous issues.”  I take this magazine in my own school, and it is a great resource.  They are full of book and author information, as well as some great quizzes and are an excellent resource for promoting reading.  And best of all – completely free!

One of the privileges of writing this blog, is the fantastic emails with information that I get sent.  This is an example of one such email.  Frances Tout, the librarian at Broadoak School wrote to me to show me the fantastic comment wall that her school library made in response to National Library Day.  Students and staff were invited to make comments on post-it notes and to attach them to this wall – and just look at the number of great responses she received!    Then Frances went on to mention her school library website, and would I like to take a look.  The website is amazing, and one of the best examples of a school library website that I personally have come across. The website has everything students need – author websites, latest news, subject links, information links, student and staff top books – it is jammed full of great information, but with a readable, unfussy style.  Frances reports that the Year 7 students have really taken to the blog, as have staff, and there is a staff only area which has the latest reports on reading and literacy.  I hope you agree that this is an example of exactly why we need professionals in our schools – librarians are so much more than just ‘book stampers’ and Frances is a great example of this.