The National Year of Reading at our College

Our final event was run this week. It has been a very busy year with the extra emphasis on really highlighting reading, in all its forms, and trying to engage our students in our different activities. I have posted before but this is a summary of the events run this year. The “Hear It” event involved a panel speaking about writing for Young Adults as well as YA books in general. All the speakers were very generous with their time and the whole event was like a conversation that the audience was invited to listen in on. We had supper after and our speakers stayed and talked with our students and their parents. Our students really appreciated the writers talking to them and answering their questions. The authors were Bec Kavanagh, Declan Fay and Tim Pegler and they spoke very highly of our boys and the conversations they had with them. It was a wonderful evening, well-coordinated by one of our TL’s, Catherine Morton, and our Principal welcomed everyone to the event with a very gracious speech.

We gave all the students (and a few parents) “snap bands” with our library blog address. At the beginning of the evening we had indicated to everyone that we would be posting the information from the evening on the blog. The writers kindly gave us their recommendations beforehand so we just had to add anything that came up during the course of the evening. These wristbands have been very popular this year. We gave them out on our Open Day as well as at the “Hear It!” event. There is a photo in my NYR flickr set.

Everyone in the library has been overseeing one of the events and supported by other staff. The whole group has done a fantastic job and raised the profile of the library at our school right across the board.

Libraries, bookshops, publishers and writers were all encouraged to celebrate reading in all its forms, throughout the community. This meant that alongside the traditional books we, at WFC, celebrated the reading of magazines and newspapers, reading in digital formats such as e-books and the many different styles of reading that occur daily, often without anyone realizing they are doing it.

We contributed to our weekly bulletin, the “In Fide”, each week and had the NYR logo prominently displayed as the College community read about some of the activities the students enjoyed.

We began with a very successful launch of the activities during lunchtime early in Term 2 and followed up with many different and successful activities that celebrated and promoted reading throughout the year, with the final event “Hear It” being held during the evening of Tuesday 30 October. This involved a panel of writers discussing reading and writing for teenagers followed by supper.

We were very pleased that quite a number of teachers and students volunteered to be Whitefriars Reading Ambassadors this year. They shared their reading preferences and habits as well as promoted reading to the College community. Their posters have been on display in the Shortis Library and mentioned in “In Fide” as well as on our blog.

A weekly quiz ran with many boys and teachers answering reading-related questions to accumulate points towards becoming the overall winner, who will receive a book of their choice.

“Read It!” was set up to encourage boys to borrow when their English classes visited the library. Every boy who borrowed a book during that class was given a raffle ticket. The raffle was drawn at the end of each fortnight. The canteen vouchers prizes were the favourite choice followed by USBs. Some boys were heard to ask their teachers if the class should come to the library every English period.

“Snap It!” was the photography competition that ran throughout Term 2 and finished on Friday 17 August. We asked students to enter photographs that celebrated reading, including reading in unusual places. This meant that some of the boys used their creativity and Photoshop skills to create some very unusual shots. We had them as part of our display during Book Week as well as on the computers around the library as screen savers. A slide show of the photographs, playing on the big television screen, also ran some lunchtimes.

The photos created quite a talking point with the other students once they were on display and we encouraged all students and staff to vote for the People’s Choice Award. One of the photographs, a panoramic view of the library has been chosen for the banner photo on our intranet pages. We will make use of all the photographs entered to promote reading and the College Library in the future. All the boys should be proud of their efforts. We were supported by our photography teacher Alison Agnew, and assistant Linda Baker, who encouraged the boys to take on the task. Many of the boys appreciate Mrs Agnew’s skill in teaching them how to “see” and observe things as well as the more manual photographic skills.

You can see a slide show of the photos the boys entered on our library blog.

The second National Year of Reading Competition also finished with a voting component. The “Film It!” competition involved students creating short videos that again celebrated books and reading. We had boys enter book trailers and some specific videos about reading. To give the boys some ideas about what direction they might take, we ran some of the internet videos that celebrated reading and books, during lunchtimes throughout Term 2. We also regularly show book trailers to promote the books in the library collection. Our own student videos ran each day during lunchtime during Book Week, with voting taking place both in the library and on-line via our intranet.  The trailers can also be seen on our library blog.

The final lively event was “Hear it!” which involved a panel of writers discussing reading and writing for teenagers, concluding with a supper for parents and students. Our library technician wrote a very good post on our library site about the “Hear It!” evening.

Below are links to some of the posts with some of our Reading Ambassadors:

We were lucky to many who were happy to volunteer or to be asked – we wanted a variety of people in the school so apart from some students we had staff – male and female, teachers who taught in various subject areas and non-teaching personnel from the principal, the chaplain and one of our maintenance (and avid environmentalist) staff.

Below are links to some of the posts with some of our Reading Ambassadors:

Fr Kierce ( former principal and WFC institution); A maths teacher; PE teacher; VCE Co-Ordinator;

National Year of Reading celebrations in our library.

It has been busy this week – first week of term 4 with senior students are getting ready for exams and we intend to do another big stock take to keep the library resources relevant to the curriculum. We still have time to celebrate however.

After school yesterday we had an afternoon tea for all the students who entered our NYR Film It! and Snap it! competitions and in particular the winners of all the competitions, our own Whitefriars NYR Ambassadors and the boys who completed the Premiers’ Reading Challenge and our own Whitefriars Reading Challenge (read between 10-14 books).

It was wonderful to see so many parents and siblings come along to celebrate with the Whitefriars boys.

Many really loved the photographs that were on display. They liked seeing the photographs professionally printed and framed. You can see a slide show of the photos the boys entered on our library blog.

We also had a screening of all the  book and reading trailers. Young and old alike became engrossed in short films created by the boys and played on our large television screen.

We  gave book prizes out to the PRC and Whitefriars Challenge boys as well as the NYR Ambassadors and the Guess It! winners.

The boys were given the opportunity to choose their book prize. We then put a book plate into each one and created matching certificates.

We offered a kindle as first prize for the Film It! competition and gift cards for the runner’s up.

The Snap It! competition’s major prize was a 12″ digital photoframe and a package made up with a packet of some very good quality photographic paper, mounts and artist’s sketch pad for the runner’s up

Yesterday afternoon the principal congratulated each boy and handed him the certificate and the book or his prize.

 

We are very lucky to have a very talented library technician who creates all our superb certificates adn book plates, Each of the Reading Ambassadors had a different image on their certificate and we had a special certificate and prize for one of our senior students who has spoorted all our activities over the past 6 years at school

Full set of images here

The library fiction collection – taking stock

I have arrived home most nights this week feeling very grimy/dusty. I look forward to a shower. I still have a cough that is worse at the end of the day. The reason for this is that I have been trying to do a combined stocktake of our fiction collection and at the same time cull out the old, the tatty and the unread novels. It is sometimes had to get rid of books that maybe classics in their fields but, if they have not been read for more than 5 years, we have a policy of removing them from the collection. Some I am quite happy to see the last of when they are too damaged to keep (a good excuse). Some of the missing titles are parts of series and I have to find out whether or not I can replace the missing volumes or get rid of the whole series (or trilogy). I have on occasion in the past gone to second-hand books shops to replace out-of-print books. It is at this time of the year I understand just how many books in the collection are out at any one time. Each year when we have sorted the books, we will take those that are is reasonable to various charity shops. We have been told that the fiction always sells well (especially when it is 50cents or $1). Stock taking is such an “Old” library thing to do but it really gives you a feel for the books and what the boys are reading. No print out or computer screen does it with quite the same feel or offer the same understanding that this hands-on approach does. It is also necessary if we are going to have a collection that is relevant to the students, and the space for it!

We have also had to send a lot of letters home to try to encourage boys to bring back the books they still have in their possession. This always brings mixed reactions. Some parents are every supportive and others are less so.

I have also been writing reports for my Pastoral care group. I meet with these boys every morning. My pastoral care group has 4 boys from each of the year levels (7-12). They arrive in my group in year 7 and we are together until they leave at the end of year 12. I therefore get to know these boys and their parents very well. It is good to be able to get the parent perspective about our schools procedures and policies.

A video about how parents can help create great schools from Heidi Hass Gable. Heidi is a mother, from a school parents group, who has eloquently looked at the subject of a child’s education from a family perspective. It is very thoughtful and really puts the case for the parents and the school to work together in educating the young people we both have in our care.

Obama reflecting on libraries

 

Democratic Presidential Nominee, Senator Barack Obama speaks at a rally at the Detroit Public Library in Detroit, MI on Sunday, September 28, 2008. Uploaded by Barack Obama.

From the ALA webite another Barack Obama story. Bound to the word was Barack Obama’s speech about libraries, when he was a humble senator.

President-Elect Barack Obama keynoted the opening general session at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, June 23–29, 2005, while a U.S. senator from Illinois. This article, published in the August 2005 issue of American Libraries, is an adaptation of that speech, which drew record crowds and garnered a standing ovation

He is supportive of libraries and librarians but mostly he related everything back to books and reading, with little acknowledgement of the digital world the libraries now belong to. However much could be applied to the use of technologies as well as books. I particularly like the following, especially when I think about the blocking and filtering that goes on in schools.

More than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the (American) story forward and the human story forward.

Whether it’s the ransacking of the great library at Alexandria, controlling information during the Middle Ages, book burnings, or the imprisonment of writers in former communist block countries, the idea has been that if we can control the word, if we can control what people hear and what they read and what they comprehend, then we can control and imprison them, or at least imprison their minds.

That’s worth pondering at a time when truth and science are constantly being challenged by political agendas and ideologies, at a time when language is used not to illuminate but, rather, to obfuscate, at a time when there are those who would disallow the teaching of evolution in our schools, where fake science is used to beat back attempts to curb global warming or fund lifesaving research.

At a time when book banning is back in vogue, libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.

and later….At the dawn of the 21st century, where knowledge is literally power, where it unlocks the gates of opportunity and success, we all have responsibilities ……….

Note he said “Knowledge is power”, not information. You need information to attain knowledge but it is what you do with the information that governs whether or not you have learnt or gained knowledge. My job in our school (and the library) is not to just help students locate information but to evaluate the information they find around them. They will then be more capable of making decisions based on reasoned, and thoughtful, research and critical analysis. They will then be able to truly become citizens of the world

Celebrating Book Week

Our Book Week Poster

This is a poster created by one of our talented library staff members. The library staff have come up with a number of activities for Book Week using some of the Web2.0 tools that we learnt about whilst completing the SLAV program from term 2.

We thought we would run some competitions that first involved us creating some items using Wordle and a Mosaic tool (one of a Flickr tools set) as well as activities that will have students creating their own podcasts and Glogs to promote books. Theses and other activities will run for the week or over one lunchtime, depending which activity it is. We are looking forward to it being a busy but fun week, hopefully with lots of student activity.