by Library | Nov 28, 2014 | Library News, Uncategorized
Yesterday at Marmara Campus and this morning at Hisar Campus all the primary students had the fun of going to hear stories read to them in their home languages. At Marmara the students were read to by older students in grades 5 – 9 and at Hisar the students we read to by parents and teachers. When we didn’t have the books in the right language we went online to the International Children’s Digital Library – this is a great website for books in many languages
We saw students enjoying being with other students who shared their language. We saw students enjoying stories, asking questions and chatting about the stories in their own languages.
Researcher Stephen Krashen has found that
- Developing literacy in first language key to developing literacy in new language
- When teachers read aloud and discuss stories with students, students read more
- Students who are read aloud to check out more library books
- Hearing stories and discussing them encourages independent reading
- Hearing stories has a direct impact on vocabulary development
Krashen, Stephen D. The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2004
All good reasons to run these wonderful sessions with our students, teachers and parents AND they are fun too.
by Library | Nov 21, 2014 | Library News, Library reports
Library report October 2014
Successes
Library Logo Thanks to Sezai and Jennifer we have this great logo. I love the combination of the pages and the laptop. You can see we are working in with the school’s corporate colours. We hope to build on this over the next few months with library documents, presentations and eventually our signs in these colours and with this logo. Creating a library brand is one of the takeaways I got from the pre conference day at the ECIS librarians conference.
Hisar Library Loft – the castle has arrived. This has been the source of much excitement at HIsar. Thanks to Lindsey and Judith for organising ways to allow children to happily take turns reading in the loft and under the loft. Inge and the children created this wonderful backdrop for the castle as well. There are blinds up at the windows now as well.
Grade 4 Skype Book Chats with grade 4 Porto, Portugal. Two weeks ago 4H skyped with CLIP 4A to discuss the books they were enjoying reading. One wonderful outcome of this discussion was to see the number of books the children had in common. Roald Dahl has fans in both schools and the children enjoyed knowing each other’s books. We had a lovely bonus experience when Mohammad from Portugal told us he was from Libya. Murad from our 4H was delighted to hear that and at the end of the book chat the two boys had a few minutes to chat in Arabic to each other. It was a great way to make connections through story and common language. Here is the library blog post about the skype calls. 4Ds session did not run as smoothly so we recorded messages on Skype and when Portugal was finally able to answer our call they were able to discuss their books as well. We hope to make contact with the smae sudents at the end of the year to reflect on the year of reading books.
Helping your child with research was the topic of a seminar I ran during primary parent teacher conferences at Marmara. While only 5 parents actually attended it was a good opportunity to create a presentation and share with them about the electronic and print resources available to their children.
Choosing a “right fit” book with grade 1 We had a special guest speak with grade 1 at Marmara about how to choose a right fit book. Ms Witte brought her shoes along and she explained about choosing the right shoe and how choosing the right book can be very similar. Mrs Hodges is now working with both grade 1 classes encouraging them to choose a “right fit” book.
EY5 at Marmara published their book about visiting the library. It is now part of their class library and available from our library as well.
Grade 8 Mysteries Unit led to the body in the library, the book shelf features mystery books and after this unit will feature favourite reads of this grade. 
Challenges and Opportunities
Yes I have decided to combine these categories as often they seem to be one and the same – all challenges seem to also present us with opportunities and opportunities often come with challenges.
International Languages Storytelling days will happen just before International Day. This will be during assembly slots for Primary – Thursday 27th 9.15 – 10 at Marmara and Friday 28th 8.45 – 9.30 at HIsar. Organisation for this will start next week. I hope we can involve students at Marmara this year and continue with our parent support at Hisar.
Battle of the Books is a programme offered in some schools in the USA and in other International Schools which encourages reading. I went to workshop on this at the ECIS conference. Lauren and Dave and I thought we would run a mini Battle or Skirmish of the Books from December culminating during Love Reading Week. We will choose 5 titles for grades 5 -6 and 5 titles for Middle School. We will use Greenhouse Book sales money to buy copies of the titles (2 copies of each title per class involved) and 2 copies of each title for the library. Then the students read the books and start to make up quiz questions based on the books they have read. The final quiz will be during Love Reading Week and classes can enter two teams each. This will be a trial run of the process which if it works well we can make bigger and better next year. This is still being worked out between us – I will keep you posted.
Library quote: relating to Challenges and Opportunities – “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
― Winston S. Churchill
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
by Library | Nov 7, 2014 | Library News
Grade 1 is focussing on finding a book that is the right fit for them. Last week grade 1 teacher Ms Witte introduced the concept by showing us how she chooses which shoe for the right fit for the occasion and the size. She then showed the students how they can choose a book which will be the right fit for them. They are encouraged to use the acronym “i-pick”. They need to consider if the book is right for purpose, interest, comprehension and whether they know the words on the page. This technique is from the Daily Cafe – engaging all students in daily literacy assessment and instruction. Our grade 1 students are ahppily finding their “right fit books”
by Library | Oct 31, 2014 | Library News, Library reports
Successes
Hisar Library opening with storyteller Alec Williams
As you can see from the photos above this was a wonderful day of celebrating the new library space. Each class arrived and cut the ribbon, officially declaring the Hisar Library OPEN. Alec worked with every class – Lindsey tells me he was exhausted by the end of the day. He wrote a special poem. As usual Alec was very generous with his time and energy. Next month I will report on the newest addition to the Hisar Library: the much anticipated loft.
ECIS 7th triennial Librarians’ Conference, Waterloo, Belgium. Thank you for the opportunity to attend this conference. The pre conference workshop was called “Rethink, Reinvent, Rejuvenate” and was run by a marketing expert, Kevin Hennah. He certainly challenged me to do just those things for our libraries at IICS. I have started work with Jennifer Gokmen to look at using the school branding colours and to ask her to help design a library logo. Our team is taking the time to display as many books as possible face out. There are more aspects to this and I am trying to implement the ideas I learned daily, taking small steps which will hopefully in the course of time make a big impact in the way our school community uses the library and the print collection.
The key note speakers all focussed on the conference theme of literacy. Jim Cummins from the University of Toronto gave some inspiring strategies to help ESOL students develop literacy in their home language and in the target language. I have been talking with some of the ESOL teachers about some of these ideas. One was to have the students write their assignments in two languages, their home language and the language of tuition. Then house the assignments in the library so students using the same home language can read the word and celebrate what was learned as well.
I attended many worthwhile workshops – two of which I have started to work with staff here to explore further. One was how the library can support the Extended Essay. Patricia and I have discussed the ideas and have some plans to create some workshops for the grade 11 students and to offer some lunchtime meet the expert times in January for the grade 12 students to tell the school community about their learning having completed the extended essay. The other was a workshop on ‘Battle of the Books’ which is one way a school can encourage and celebrate reading. Lauren Grahame and I are working on possibly launching this for grade 4 and 5, 6 and 7 during Love Reading week and having the final Battles in May.
The workshop I presented on our school journey with New Literacies was well attended. I was surprised at how many schools are at the beginning of this journey. I received some very positive feedback. Some teachers took our New Literacies document back to their schools to add to their road maps to literacy.
I was tweeting @kiwionthego using the conference hashtag #ecislib2014 and I was blogging about some of the sessions on my personal blog http://librarybond.blogspot.com.tr I have written a blog post for our Professional Learning website.
Challenges
Grade 2 begin using Destiny Lindsey, Maria and I have started to work with grade 2 use of Destiny by giving them usernames and passwords. This has many challenges at both campuses due to technology availability but we are creative librarians and have made a good start. Our sessions with Destiny and grade 2 cover Information, Tool and Community literacy and will continue until the winter break at least.
Personal Learning Communities – I am so sorry to have missed the Friday launch of this PD initiative. There are so many great communities I would like to act as a resource person for the ones involved with student inquiry.
Teacher Librarian job description Thank you to John – I now have a job description. It only took 6 – 7 weeks to complete and finalise. Now I would like to look at the 2014 – 2015 Library Goals. With John’s help you will see a draft of these very shortly.
Opportunities
Skype meetings with students in Portugal. Next week and the week after our grade 4 students will be talking with grade 4 students from Colégio Luso-Internacional do Porto in Portugal about books they enjoy reading. This is part of the International Association of School Libraries celebration of school libraries month. 4H will go first on Thursday 23 October and 4D will be in the following week.
Quote this month Perhaps this should be added to the job description
Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.
–Patrick Ness
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
by Library | Oct 24, 2014 | Library News
On September 25th Hisar Campus hosted story teller Alec Williams and had each class open the library by cutting a ribbon. Alec wrote a poem to celebrate the occasion – it can be found below. Thank you so much to Alec. He told some very funny stories and everyone could join in with him.
Library Opening Poem
for IICS at Hisar, September 2014
At the library…
You can find the perfect book
At the library…
Why not come and have a look?
At the library…
Peter Pan and Captain Hook
Are at the library!
At the library…
There is fun on all the shelves
At the library…
You can find out for yourselves
At the library…
Giants, Princesses and Elves
Are at the library!
At the library…
There’s so much for you to read
At the library…
They’ve got all you ever need
At the library…
Old King Arthur and his steed
Are at the library!
At the library…
Magic stories fill your head
At the library…
You can read them in your bed
At the library…
Witches’ homes of gingerbread
Are at the library!
At the library…
Why not go and use it now?
At the library…
Mrs Paze shows you how
At the library…
Superheroes who say “Pow!”
Are at the library!
At the library…
It’s the best place in the school
At the library…
If you use it, you’re so cool
At the library…
We all hope that next day you’ll
Be in the library!
Go there soon… OK!
by Library | Oct 16, 2014 | Library News, Literacies
During Parent Teacher conferences at Marmara Campus this presentation was given to help parents know how to support their children with research from home.
