UKLA Book Awards 2014

The UKLA (UK Literacy Association) is unrelated to libraries officially but totally related to my key interest: promoting literacy and reading in schools.  They have an annual book award, with age categories, with a longlist chosen by a panel of teachers from a selection sent to them by UK publishers.  I thought it would be interesting to see how much of an overlap there is between their longlist for 12-16+yrs and the Carnegie longlist this year.  Although the winners are all announced in the summer the UKLA longlists come out a lot earlier than the CKG:

Kite Spirit by Sita Brahmachari - I hadn't heard of this until very recently so I need to seek it out
The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks - love love love this book, but it is the most depressing thing I've read for a long time
Anthem for Jackson Dawes by Celia Bryce - my girls at school keep telling me to read this but I haven't got round to it yet
Waiting For Gonzo by Dave Cousins - better than '15 Days Without a Head', a brilliant story
After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross - the most realistic picture of the future out of all the 'dystopia' I have read, without exception
Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner - just gorgeous, but obviously it has already won the Carnegie as it was actually published in August 2012...not sure how it ended up on this list!
The Disappeared by C.J. Harper - I know nothing of this book, will have to look it up
The Seeing by Diana Hendry - I read it a while ago and can't remember much so maybe it wasn't all that great
Monkey Wars by Richard Kurti - I have a copy of this and keep meaning to read it!
Hostage 3 by Nick Lake - again, I have a copy...
The Positively Last Performance by Geraldine McCaughrean - I don't like McCaughrean's books very much so I try to avoid reading them, unless they end up on the Carnegie longlist, which this inevitably will <sigh> but I'll try to keep an open mind!
Ferryman by Claire McFall - looked at the blurb, sounds intriguing, need to get hold of it
Siege by Sarah Mussi - also already on my tbr pile
Into That Forest by Louis Nowra - I did enjoy it but it felt more like a book for adults, a memoir of childhood
Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher - really very good
Song Hunter by Sally Prue - I've missed this one as well
The Wall by William Sutcliffe - another on the tbr pile, but pretty close to the top!
A World Between Us by Lydia Syson - I did enjoy it, some history and great story, but I don't think it is award winning
Now is the Time for Running by Michael Williams - another new one to me
Silver by Chris Wooding - loved this book, very well crafted

So, I won't challenge myself to finish them all like I do with the Carnegie, too much on my tbr pile already, but we'll wait and see how many match up in a couple of months!

Book Monopoly

I tweeted a photo of my Book Monopoly Board last week and a number of people wanted to know how it works - too much for a tweet!  So here we go:

Towards the end of last term, someone on SLN (School Librarians Network - a yahoo mailing list) mentioned a book monopoly game that they play with their pupils and I thought it sounded like a brilliant idea to try here to get pupils to try different genres.

If you google 'monopoly template' there are lots available, and it is just a case of changing the names of the streets!  I used a 'poster' template on Publisher and so printed it really big for a display in the library and brought a die in to school.  Each label has a picture of one of the traditional Monopoly pieces, but obviously I have more than 6 players!

The rules are very simple: 

Pick a book from the genre of the street you have landed on.

Before your next roll you must pass an AR* quiz on the book,

write a review or draw an illustration

Chance

Mrs Fielding chooses a book for you

Community Chest

Choose a book that another pupil recommends

Free Parking

You choose any book!

Sweet shop

instant sweet and another roll

10 points**

instant 10 points and another roll

25 points for passing ‘Go’!**

On my board I don't have 'jail', I have extra 'free parking'.  

*AR = Accelerated Reader.
** we have a House Point system so all the points go towards rewards.

Some of you will know that my school is being closed down, we only have 125 pupils left, mainly in year 11 (the rest is a small year 9) so I have opened it up to all pupils and was really surprised at how many year 11s wanted to get on there.  I now have about 60 pupils signed up so it is rather crowded along the bottom!

Anyway, that's it, simples!

Improving Reading, Toe by Toe

I have completely neglected the blog since March, didn't even post my excitement about the announcement that Maggot Moon, one of my favourites of last year, won the Carnegie!  But OfSTED have been and gone (we're a 'good' school and they were particularly impressed with our improvements in literacy, hooray!), the KS3 and 4 exams have ended, it is nearly time for me to give reading prizes to the pupils and so I find myself with a bit of extra time.  Just a quick post today to draw your attention to the article I wrote for Information Europe Today a few weeks ago about the reading sessions I've had with some Year 10 boys this year and the fantastic books we've used (in particular a shout out to Barrington Stoke)

Improving reading, Toe by Toe

Unfortunately the photo is not of my library and I do not have a big cuddly bear, although it does make me tempted to bring one in!

Our Dress Up Day!

I wrote about Literacy Week Day 5 on Saturday but had left my camera at school.  Here are some of the promised pictures, selected so as to not ruin any reputations...

Batgirl forgot to change into
her day-wear!

This needs no caption...

He kept the mask on all day! 

House Coloured Oompa Loompas

Batman popped in to help

Some of my lovely staff!

Sue picked our winner, my favourite,
but never fear, Batgirl caught him later...

Arch enemies meet in the library!

Literacy Week Day 5

The grand finale of literacy week was a character dress up day to raise money for Pelican Post ...or it will be for them if I can get in touch with them!  Some people made a brilliant effort, but of course I stupidly left the camera at school and so can't show you any until Monday!  Multicoloured Oompa Loompas popping up everywhere, Tinkerbell telling her story at break in the playground, Batgirl and Batman dishing out justice across the school, French classes writing about the characters they were dressed as (in French, obv), Winnie the Pooh was spotted hard at work, and three  life size Wallys turned up!  Kids were finding them as well as the original Wally, who is now relaxing on my sofa after a good week trekking around the school

Our final guest was Sue Ransom, author of the Small Blue Thing trilogy.

She came to talk to our remaining Year 9s, about writing, being published, and inspirations.  Even boys that can't sit still in a normal lesson asked questions and were interested in the answers.  After school was pretty hectic as we had the favourite costumes from each House, as well as lots of staff in their amazing outfits, in the library so that Sue could pick the fave...I'm not going to tell you who the character was because I want to share a picture with you on Monday...and then as it settled down in there a few stayed to have a chat with her about writing.

Overall I think we can say the week was a success!  Loyalty cards are being waved in the library, pupils that rarely come in have been begging me to borrow books by our guests, one of the year 10 boys that really struggles with reading is going to read Soul Beach with me a few chapters a day because he was so intrigued by the sound of it, some others (including a member of staff!) have been inspired to write their own stories, finished copies of the poems written with Neal Zetter on Monday are appearing on my desk, everyone is going to really miss the literary lunches (not that I had time to eat any of them...) and teachers have really enjoyed adding literacy activities to their normal lessons.  On Monday I shall draw a raffle for all the pupils that took part in the mini-challenges for a range of signed books, sweets and other literary related goodies that I've been squirrelling away.

Literacy Week Day 4

Take a look at days 1, 2 & 3 (I can't be bothered linking to them again, they're easy to find!) for what's been happening so far.

Again, little library things, literacy starter activities, story time around the school at break, and then today's wonderful guest Kate Harrison, the author of numerous grown up books who has recently added Young Adult fiction to her repertoire with the first two books of the Soul Beach trilogy out now...

She spent half of lunch break chatting with one of my pupil assistants at the desk about what he's reading, and then talked to a group of Year 10s about social networking and the inspiration of tribute sites to her books, as well as her experience of undercover work for the BBC (I heard a boy whispering at that point "she was a spy!").  She had a really tough group of kids - a lot of them were boys that I rarely see in the library - but they sat in awe and asked some great questions, giving a lovely round of applause at the end.  After school, as James and Moira did, she stayed in the library chatting with a small group of my regulars and they really enjoyed the chance for a more intimate conversation.  AND I remembered to take a picture and bring it home, hooray!

After I waved goodbye to Kate I had to get the library ready for our literacy evening.  HoI organised it and invited parents to listen to me, her, 2nd in Inclusion and an English teacher talk about reading/writing/speaking and listening.  We had 16 come, which for our school is pretty amazing, and they were really engaged with the activities we came up with.  I talked about Accelerated Reader, reading for pleasure, and how to find things in a library (we played Dewey Bingo).

I can't believe tomorrow is the last day of literacy week!  Our last author!  Wally finding his last hiding place!  Last chance for teachers to tell kids about the books that inspired them!  And it is a dress up day!  Soooo excited, and teachers have been really excited about planning their costumes and pupils have been talking about it all week...I've told them that if they want to come in jeans and a t-shirt that is fine but they have to tell me a character from a book or film that wears jeans and a t-shirt...pictures tomorrow, though we're going to the pub after school so you might have to wait until Saturday to find out how it goes, ha!

 

Literacy Week Day 3

Have a look at Day 1 and Day 2 before you read this...

Day 3 of Literacy week, yaaay!  I had a complaint this morning from one of the teachers...having read my blog, he told me off for saying teachers are only going along with the week because HoI is telling them to.  He said they're doing it because everything we've suggested is fun!  So I apologise, I know it is true, we've got a great staff team and there is always a good proportion of them that will volunteer for anything I ask them to do...it is the case though that it has been quicker and easier to get things approved - I or HoI (or our 2nd in Inclusion, who has also helped with a lot of the preparation) have an idea, we like it, so HoI says she'll tell the Head we're doing it!  If I'd planned it alone I think it would be far more low key, for example I wouldn't dream of suggesting having an author a day and taking over that many lessons in close succession.

So we had the usual little challenges, teachers telling pupils about books that inspired them, Wally was hiding somewhere else and there was a special French story time at break and lunch in the library as it was European Day of Languages today.  Then after lunch our special guest was the wonderful Moira Young, coming to see some familiar faces as she visited us back in March to promote Blood Red Road.  The sequel came out in August, Rebel Heart, while I was warming the kids up (Moira got stuck in traffic on the way in) they laughed at me for being far too excited...but in a nice way, I think...

It felt a much more personal affair this time, talking about what inspired the landscapes in her books, and then after school a small group stayed behind to ask more questions - including a year 11 boy who had not borrowed a single book from the library until he met Moira in March and read her book and now reads a couple of books a week - and I took some pictures that I could have included here but I left the camera at school <sigh>

One of the brilliant ideas HoI had was getting our Canteen Manager in to her office to discuss a literary menu for the week.  Between the three of us we came up with some [slightly tenuous] links to meals that our kids would actually agree to eat! I made up some sheets of stickers with a picture of Oliver Jeffers's Book Eating Boy and each time a pupil chose the 'Literary Lunch' for the day they gave them a sticker to show me to swap for raffle tickets and House Points.

 

What more could I possibly have to share with you tomorrow?...

Literacy Week Day 2

Check out my post about day 1 here.

So the rest of this week will be less frantic for me as my mini-Where's Wally wasn't hiding in the library, the lovely ladies at reception were looking after him today and he'll be somewhere else tomorrow, and we only have visitors in the afternoon.  Saying that, I have a lot to catch up on that I've ignored while planning this week, and I do have to stay late on Thursday to talk at a parents' literacy evening, then Friday I'll be running around taking pictures of costumes...but today...

Before school and at break I had pupils doing my wordsearches/code breakers for the day (different mini-challenges every day) as well as the usual stuff.  I had a pretty stressful break because a Head of House has hidden golden tickets around the school and the kids are pestering me to find out where they are (I don't know, honest, but they won't believe me and so get stroppy!) but it was nice to see a few loyalty cards being stamped at the desk as books were borrowed and lots came and thanked me for the books.  One of the teachers came in to tell me that his group were opening the goody bags yesterday they were really excited and thought the books were awesome!  There was a lovely peaceful corner during break where one of our English teachers was reading a Carribean tale to an engrossed cross section of pupils.  I have three teachers reading stories at break each day this week, one in the library and the other two elsewhere in the school, and they're getting pretty good crowds from all year groups!

Our star guest for the day today was the lovely James Dawson, author of Hollow Pike.  I stupidly didn't take any pictures of him without my pupils in so can't share them on here...I shall remember to do better the rest of this week!  They loved him!  He came into the library during lunch break and a few of my regulars got a bit star struck, most of them would just look at him from a distance...then he held a crowd of 60 rowdy year 10s in the palm of his hand for an hour.  I'd warned him they take a while to settle down but they're generally not awful, but I was so impressed by how taken they were with him - when he read a few pages of Hollow Pike you could hear a pin drop and they asked some great questions.  The round of applause he got at the end sounded like it was 600 pupils not 60!  A few of them, along with some pupils that hadn't been in that lesson, came to the library after school to talk to him a bit more and he was brilliant with them.

We also had support from the lovely Tales on Moon Lane for a small book shop in the library after school, selling James's book along with a nice current selection of fiction, including, of course, those by the coming authors.  They've left me the books so that I can sell them at the other events during the week, even trusted me with their cash box...now locked away in a safe place and hovering in a paranoid corner of my mind for the rest of the week!

Tune in tomorrow for more exciting literacy happenings!  I'll have a bit more time so I might show you my literary menus

Literacy Week Day 1

The idea of having a week of literacy related activities in September was suggested by our Head of Inclusion (HoI), who became my line manager as of this term, in June and we started planning immediately.  Initially, she wanted every child to get a goody bag with stationery in it, maybe an author visit, and for departments to have a literacy focus in lessons that week...I think what we came up with is bigger than either of us anticipated on our minuscule budget!  Firstly, at the end of term I set a competition to design a logo for literacy week.  The picture below was drawn by one of our (now) year 10 girls.  This is on all the posters around the school and was stuck onto each of the goody bags.

I sent an email to a few of my contacts in childrens' publishing, begging for goodies &/or authors that might be available.  As far as guests were concerned, after some very enthusiastic responses I realised we'd be able to have someone every day (more about them later...).  Scholastic did wonders with a huge number of bookmarks, posters, postcards and sample chapters from some brilliant recent books and smaller amounts came from elsewhere.  HoI asked if I could get a book for every pupil, again Scholastic saved me with their online warehouse sale at the end of last term, and I went to Makro and bought a huge pile of sweets.  I also had a bunch of loyalty cards made for the library, I was so excited when they arrived, and we put a newspaper (at the last minute this morning) and small leaflet about punctuation and grammar in there as well as a bunch of stationery.  It took about 5 hours last week to pack 350 bags, the only time I've been relieved by our decreasing roll, they were given out at the end of today by tutors and I had a swapshop in the library for anyone that wanted to change their book.  I had a choice of about 12 titles and had considered literacy levels and interest when I put them in the bags but about 20 pupils came and changed them.

During the day today we had workshops with all of year 8 and one group of year 10 with Neal Zetter, a performance poet who works around London in schools and libraries for a very reasonable rate.  We were writing poems about food and just about every pupil got involved regardless of academic ability.  In fact, the lower ability group seemed to enjoy it most, and produced arguably the best poems, staying engaged and on task the whole time.  Neal did say before he came that 1hour sessions was his absolute minimum length of time, he prefers 90minutes, and that could be part of why the low ability session was a greater success as we stayed together across 2 periods.  I highly recommend getting in touch with Neal if you want to do something a bit different!

 

The best thing about this literacy week being 'sponsored' by the HoI is that she has the authority to get people to do things ;-) so every member of staff is getting involved somehow.  We have teachers reading stories at three locations every breaktime, literary themed lunches being served (I'll tell you more another day), literacy related starter activities happening in every department as well as a number of them organising their own competiitons...

 

There is so much more happening, I'll share later in the week!

Lighting the Future

The 2012 Joint YLG, SLG and SLA Conference

For those of you not in the know, this weekend was the joint conference of three bodies that care greatly about children and reading:

CILIP Youth Libraries Group

CILIP School Libraries Group

School Library Association

I am a member of all three, and on the London Committee of the YLG.  Each group usually holds their own annual conference, but for the first time since 2000 they decided to join forces for a mega conference and came up with a really packed programme.  Inspirational speakers from all sides of youth librarianship and literacy gave ringing war cries to promote our services 'outisde the echo chamber' and 'shout about' school libraries.  Authors, poets and storytellers entertained us with their creative minds and made clear their support for what we do (they judged their audience well for roaring rounds of applause!).  Enthusiastic publishers loaded us down with tonnes of proof copies and promotional materials for their Carnegie and Greenaway hopefuls of the future...it was non-stop, from checking in at noon on Friday to leaving at 2.30pm today.  I don't want to regurgitate everything I heard so if you're interested in detail it is worth searching #LTF12 on twitter or looking at the tweets collated by John Iona, taking out some of the more irreverent observations, on storify.  I just thought I'd share a few of my highlights:

I really enjoyed the panel discussion about reading and technology on Friday afternoon with three very eloquent and knowledgeable panelists.  Bev Humphrey talked about using new technologies to support literacy while Jonathan Douglas made the point that the Reading Agency's research into reading habits have shown a decline in reading in all formats, but that children are accessing story in new ways that still promote language and creativity.  Dave Coplin, from Microsoft, won the crowd over talking about how what he does should support what we do and that, if anything, the existence of the Internet makes a Librarian more important for curating and finding knowledge.  He said he doesn't see the point in teaching how to use particular software, but teaching children critical thinking and research skills is vital.

Storytelling over dinner capped off the evening wonderfully, I enjoyed listening to John Agard so much that I had to rush to the bookshop to buy a book of his poetry for him to sign.

Friday's haul of books, bags, posters,
mug, postcards and bookmarks

Saturday's intense but rousing panel discussion around 'Reading in the political spotlight' with a stellar panel was excellent.  My favourite quotes were from Aidan Chambers, who made it clear that he disagreed with government interference in the work of specialists, and that we must not confuse the profession of teacher with the act of teaching because as Librarians we can teach more!  Simon Mayo chaired the panel and made some great points himself about the tangible difference between a school which holds it's library at it's heart and one that doesn't have one.  Again, the after dinner entertainment was fantastic, with Morris Gleitzman keeping the room silent for an hour with his fascinating life story.

Saturday's many books...

Kevin Crossley-Holland, in his role as President of the SLA, gave a wonderful closing speech on Sunday, telling us he firmly believes that a well stocked, well-funded library should be the cornerstone of every school in the country and he is prepared to work hard for us during his presidency.

All of the whole delegate sessions were fantastic but, to be honest, I was disappointed by the workshops I was allocated. I decided not to tell you which ones I went to because others might have found them useful but I found that they were on matters that I have personally considered a lot already and, one in particular, I felt I could have presented a better session about myself! They hadn't been my first choices so hopefully most people didn't feel the same way as me.

The exhibition of publishers and library suppliers was great fun. Now that I've been on the London Committee for a few years I've talked to a number of the publicists and it was nice to be recognised and have books pushed into my hands almost immediately. Meeting up with Librarians I know well or only see at events, or even that I'd not met in person but have tweeted regularly, was excellent and I left with an awful lot to carry home!

Really impressed with Hot Key Books
efforts to save the environment by giving
memory sticks with their proofs on!

Of all the books I picked up I think the 3 I'm most excited about the Darren Shan, Elen Caldecott, and Sally Gardner.  I also picked up a nice little heap of non-fiction for school.

Greenaway shadowing again...

Continuing shadowing the CILIP Greenaway award with a group of Year 7s. Have a look at my last post about it to see what we've looked at so far.

I wanted to show my pupils that illustrating isn’t as easy as it looks today, with 2 of their favourite from the Greenaway shortlist. 

Wolf Won’t Bite has deceptively simple illustrations while Can we Save the Tiger includes a lot of black and white pencil drawings with only some coloured.  I started the lesson by introducing them to the two books.

 …Tiger is not a typical picture book with the beautiful illustrations being complemented by scientific descriptions of the animals, and the story told is all true, about how a variety of animals are in trouble due to human activity. I read them the introduction and pointed out some of my favourite pages. I read the whole of Wolf… to them because it is a nice, quick, funny story.

I had photocopies of some pages from each for them to get inspiration from – the task was to either draw one of the endangered animals or to think of something else the pigs could get the wolf to do! The class was pretty evenly split as to which book they chose – I was surprised that 2 out of 3 boys decided to draw the tiger – while a couple of them had brilliant ideas of how the wolf could be tormented further. I particularly liked the wolf jumping through a flaming hoop, and wasn’t sure whether to be a bit alarmed by the idea of the pigs cooking him in a cauldron to eat for dinner! I like to do a display of their drawings alongside a display of the books in the library, last year’s was great but it was a bigger class and so a bigger display, at the moment most of them haven’t finished their picture so hopefully I’ll have a couple more brought to me next week.

At the end of the lesson we had heads on desks and eyes closed to anonymously vote for our favourite of the two – the other we will not look at again as part of the challenge. It was a really close thing, with a number of them having trouble deciding because they love them both, but in the end Can We Save The Tiger won with 60% of the vote.

So still in the running as far as we're concerned: Can We Save the Tiger?, Slog's Dad, The Gift, Puffin Peter and A Monster Calls.  We finished reading Slog's Dad and thought it was really good, they found some of the illustrations very disturbing!  The only one we haven't yet looked at is A Monster Calls.  It is beyond most of them to read but I think I'll show them the clip of Patrick Ness reading an excerpt that is available on the shadowing site to give them a feel for it.

Greenaway shadowing continued...

Have a look at my last post about shadowing the Greenaway award to see how we narrowed down the books to look at 4 of them in session 2...

Firstly, I gave them a simplified version of the criteria and we discussed what each aspect means and how we should assess the books. One thing they find very difficult is to recognise that the fact a book is babyish doesn’t mean it is bad but that it is aimed at a younger readership, with this in mind it wasn’t surprising that 3 of the ones they liked the least last week are the ones that are the  classic definition of ‘picture book’. While we discussed the criteria I showed them pages from the 4 books that demonstrate what we were talking about, and then gave them a brief summary of what each story is about. The task for the day was, in pairs or threes, to look at one of the books in more detail to decide why it is a worthy contender for the prize.  They had 10minutes to do this and then present their reasons verbally to the rest of the group while showing them their favourite pages.

Puffin Peter’s readers loved the colours, Solomon Crocodile’s readers loved the expressions on the characters’ faces, while There are no cats in this book led discussion about the different methods of illustration that are used in it and how it involves the reader. Those looking at The Gift initially said they didn’t like it, but I said they have to think of something positive to say so have a closer look, and eventually the brilliance of the cut out design of the pages brought them round and they spoke really well about how detailed the pages are and how effective the use of one colour on each page is.

The goal was to persuade the rest of the class that the book was a worthy contender, and the end result was that we had to vote out 2 of the books. They put their heads on the desk so they couldn’t see what the others were voting for and put their hands up when I called out titles. The two we’re never going to look at again…Solomon Crocodile and There are no cats in this book! I was very surprised that The Gift ended the lesson as a favourite as none of them had wanted to have it as their book to promote, but I think it is their dislike of babyish things coming out again. The Solomon Crocodile team were very disappointed but everyone agreed that we needed to let the cats out into the world...

In another session I decided it was time to do some reading, so we started Slog's Dad together, looking closely at the pictures and discussing what story they are telling.  I wouldn't say they're enjoying it because they know it is really sad and they're pretty squeamish about how his Dad wastes away, but I think they are appreciating how well the pictures tell the story without even really needing the words.  I wouldn't be surprised if it stays a favourite right to the end of our shadowing.

Teen Librarian Monthly article

Just a quick note to point you to April's Teen Librarian Monthly because I wrote an article for it about how the Department 19 by Will Hill inspired some of my pupils!

Reading Role Models

A belated Happy World Book Night for Monday! On the day, I had 10 minutes to speak in a full staff meeting at school about ‘How to get the most out of the Information Centre’ and I thought I’d share some of what I said.

I started by explaining why I wanted to speak in a staff meeting: to remind them that there is something for everyone, whatever their department. I went on to highlight the aspects of the new OFSTED framework that put a lot of weight on cross-curricula literacy…I talked briefly about finding things themselves in the library, including me in their planning so that I can suggest useful resources, and referenced the DEMOS Truth, Lies and the Internet report and how I can help with evaluating and referencing sources.

The spiel for the final two slides are what I want to share with you, because I think they are crucial:

There are two sides to my role that are equally important. One is supporting the academic life of the school and the other is developing the pupils’ relationship with books and instilling a love of reading. You know that the latter is my favourite part, but as hard as I try it cannot be a one woman battle. The library should not be the only place the pupils see reading.

The OECD, produces league tables of developed countries for all sorts of statistics, including the percentage of 15 year olds that say they regularly read for pleasure. The United Kingdom has been dropping down in the ranking for years, and countries we would think far less developed, such as Hungary and Lithuania are far ahead of us. Many studies have shown that readers do better in life, regardless of their socio-economic background, so everyone that has any influence on children’s lives needs to make a massive effort to encourage reading…

Sometimes children will suddenly take to reading, something sparks an interest and then they’re hooked. Those of you that teach [name] will have noticed last term that it was difficult to get his nose out of a book, in 3 months he read 23 books despite him having borrowed nothing in the entire year and a term previously. All because one book I gave to him in December caught his imagination.

They can’t do it on their own. A lucky few will just naturally have the reading bug but most of them need a gentle shove in the right direction. That’s why it is so important that they see the adults they know as reading role models. There will be relatives that make an effort to do this but for a lot of our pupils you are their best chance. Miss [name] frequently has to renew books I’ve lent her because when she’s shown them to a pupil that child just has to read it immediately – these are children that rarely choose to read getting hooked in because someone they respect is raving about the book.

I finished by explaining about World Book Night and sharing books, and everyone left the meeting inspired and raring to read...well, some of them :-)

Greenaway shadowing

I don't have a Carnegie shadowing group at school, the library is too busy for me to be able to concentrate on a reading group after school so I just make do with informally saying to regulars 'read this, it is amazing and it has been shortlisted for the Carnegie', followed with an explanation as to why that is important.  What I am doing, for the 3rd year now, is shadowing the Kate Greenaway award with a group of Year 7s in their weekly lesson.  Today I told them about the award and showed them some previous winners, then introduced them to the books by making them "Judge a book by it's cover".  Obviously they can't be trusted to just look at the covers and not open the books, so I wrapped them in cling film first and gave them about a minute per book to rate them out of 5.

While I totted up their scores they had a browse of the previous winners and shortlists to see what kind of thing appeals to the Greenaway judges, and then I announced our favourites so far.  Next lesson we will only look at the 4 they liked the least based on the cover, those were 'Solomon Crocodile', 'Wolf Won't Bite', 'Puffin Peter' and 'The Gift'.    We'll discuss the criteria for the award and actually open the books this time, ooo, and get to know them a bit better.

The winner will be announced in about 9 weeks, we won't have 9 lessons looking at the books as there are other things to do as well, but I'm planning a few more sessions for us to whittle the shortlist down to our favourite.

I was surprised to see that the overwhelming favourite so far is 'Can we Save the Tiger?', I'll be interested to see how much opinions change when they see what's inside them all!

World Book Day

I work in a secondary school so World Book Day is a little more low-key than I imagine it is in primary schools - I love the idea of dressing like book characters and doing book related things all day but I can't take pupils off timetable very often and without an excellent reason and I'm not sure that my cool teens would be prepared to dress up!  So I try to do something that doesn't take too much preparation, doesn't disturb teaching at all, and is good fun.  I tend to have a week of little things happening e.g. a pairs competition (find and match up the pairs around the library - different ones each day), or sevens (find seven words/names and tell me the link), quizzes, text tales (write a story in 140 characters)...this year was the simplest yet, but in some ways the most effective.  

I was allowed to take the year 7s off timetable to meet an author on the Monday, Sam Gayton, to talk about his book The Snow Merchant.  They really enjoyed listening to Sam read some of the story and got really involved when he discussed the process of illustrating his characters (the pictures in the book are lovely).  He also treated us to a sneak preview of his new book, a sequel to Gulliver's Travels!

Then a small challenge in the library: each break something new on the whiteboard for the kids to write their responses to:

I also had "worst book I've read" but most pupils put down books they've read in English - a good demonstration of why I didn't choose to do English beyond G.C.S.E. - so I didn't take a photo!  My final one, lunch break on Friday, was "my favourite book" but a teacher rubbed it off while I went to have my lunch before coming back with my camera :-(  We had a great time discussing their answers, I gave a raffle ticket to each pupil that put an answer, except to one of my favourite Year11s who insisted on putting 'OCR science revision guide' as his answer to every question, except for the 'best boyfriend' one for which he put himself :-)

I always like to do something that can get the whole school involved on the day itself.  In previous years I've asked for staff to volunteer to wear a badge so that the pupils have to find them and discover the links (e.g. character & their book, job and book title), created a form that the kids have to fill out during the day, and then had prizes for the completed entries handed in.  This year I made it as easy as was humanly possible - I put a sticky label in the pigeon holes of every member of staff on wednesday afternoon and sent them an email saying they need to write their favourite childhood book on it and wear it all day thursday.  On thursday morning I gave the kids that were in the library a form with 2 columns - staff name and book title - and told them to harrass any staff they saw without a label...word spread, lots more forms were collected from me throughout the day.   All except 2 teachers took part and some of them pupils had nearly 70 staff members written on their pages!  I gave raffle tickets out - the more answers the more tickets - and at the end of the day I had a queue of about 1/4 of the pupils in the school with pages of responses.  It took me 40minutes to get through them all and, including those for the whiteboard questions, I gave out over 800 raffle tickets!  All I had for prizes were small chocolates, some boxes of maltesers and half a dozen books, but still, they love winning anything...it doesn't have to cost a lot of money or take a huge amount of time to get everyone involved and recognising the Library

Love Libraries and #libday8

Every time I see the Library Day in the Life project I mean to join in but never find the time, but I felt it was worth making the effort to tell you about today what with it being National Libraries Day tomorrow.  Linking in with the CILIP Shout About School Libraries campaign, today was dedicated to School Libraries, yay!

So, a day in the life of CazApr1, Librarian in a school of approximately 600 pupils.  Normally working alone but 2days a week with a fellow Librarian:

7.30am Pick up the newspaper.
7.45am Unlock the Library: the queue outside can vary from 5 to 20 kids, this morning it was a small crowd - hopefully because they've remembered that Friday mornings are for quiet reading and revision only.  This is because at...
8am my breakfast club convenes: up to 10 Year 9 boys that have been highlighted as needing extra reading support.  Normally I spend the morning helping pupils with homework, chatting with regulars or helping them choose books, but on Fridays I leave the main space in the hands of a colleague while we go round the corner for some peace and quiet.  Today 7 of my group came and we played scrabble.
8.25am First bell - by this time there are normally 50-70 pupils in the room to clear out (up to 100 if it is bad weather) before...
8.30am Period 1: a Year 11 science lesson using the computers and books to research individual projects.
9.30am Period 2: planning a referencing and researching lesson for Year 10s, updating the in-house rewards system, e-mails*, a cuppa.
10.30am Break: again, if it is bad weather we'll get over 100 pupils in the library but that is far too crowded.  A member of teaching staff is in with me to help with crowd control so I spend the 15minutes tackling "low level negative behaviour" in amongst the usual requests for help finding books...today had the added bonus of handing out Love Libraries badges to my faves, and collecting final entries for my week's competiiton**
10.45am Period 3: Tidy up - tend to lend 40-50 books a day but reshelve far more!  Then preparing for the borough's school librarians meeting next week - we're planning a book quiz for March and I'm organising the guest authors and doing some of the quiz questions.
11.45am Period 4: Year 7 literacy group in to choose books, read, and do Accelerated Reader quizzes.  I sneak out to have my lunch for part of the lesson.
12.45am: Lunch break: similar to first break, with a different member of teaching staff, today we had about 80 pupils at any one time.  Loads came begging me for one of the badges but only pupils that regularly use me/the library properly got one - I told the others they need to borrow more books to maybe get something next time!
1.15pm Period 5: Year 8 English class in for their regular reading lesson (at least once a fortnight depending on the teacher's lesson plans) - we use Accelerated Reader for Years 7&8.
2.15pm Pupils in tutor: I update the AR records.
2.30pm End of the school day: About 30 pupils rush into the library -  some to carry on with homework, some to choose books, but lots to play draughts and chess - I often get roped into a game until...
3.30pm Officially my hometime, and actually today I got the last 6th formers out at 3.45pm - as they left they said "We love you Miss, have a nice weekend" - bless!

*Here's an email I sent to all teachers this morning:
"Tomorrow is National Love Libraries day and there have been things happening up and down the country all week as a build up. Today is dedicated to School Libraries (and School Librarians) so I thought I’d quickly highlight my Top Ten Tasks:

1. Raving about reading to teenagers and staff…talking about books we love, with a surprisingly high % of our pupils
2. Finding something appropriate for boys who ‘never read’ and getting a group of them to regularly come to a breakfast club
3. Providing book and electronic resources for teachers in and out of the Information Centre, and helping during lessons in the IC
4. Working with the transition group
5. Showing pupils better ways of researching and finishing homework
6. Crowd control before school, during breaks and after school
7. Managing the Accelerated Reader programme for years 7&8
8. Getting involved in dyslexia friendly/literacy/anti-bullying/g&t…
9. Choosing, ordering and cataloguing books
10. In recent months…Playing chess!

Not to mention competitions, events (some coming up soon!), newsletters, the CILIP Youth Libraries Group London work I do outside of school, sleuthing, reading and scribing in exams…and occasionally reading a book!"

**I had a Vampires vs Werewolves competition - tell me about your favourite paranormal creature (writing and pictures, made up or one you've read about) - with a few signed books as prizes and a couple of promotional bags.  I'm going to choose the winners on Monday and go to assemblies.

Pretty typical day really, kids often say lovely things but today I got extra because of all the badges I gave out - they didn't just take them as "love libraries badges", they said they wanted them because they love me!