Donna Jo Napoli – writer in residence 2015. One whole week with a writer of this caliber was a real gift to our school community. We tried many new events while Donna Jo was with us – a writers’ workshop during the weekend, a TED talk – keynote for the middle school and a poetry cafe in the library to conclude the week. Special thanks to Jane, Suzy and Jen for all their work in the many hours of planning for this visit. We will meet to reflect on how it all went and some ideas for next time.
Here is Donna Jo’s reflection about her visit, “From the tiniest folk through the high school, I found the students at IICS lively and responsive. They are always ready to consider others’ ideas and to discuss their own, and in an atmosphere of complete respect. That feeling permeates the school. The teachers are inviting and encouraging, both to visitors (like me) and to the students. There is nothing better than seeing a smiling, nodding face when I am facing a group of people I don’t know and presenting ideas that might be controversial — and at IICS there were many such faces.
Donna Jo and students
We did writing workshops and the students happily consulted with each other, gave feedback to each other, and raced along on their own creations. Perhaps the highlight of my visit (or, really, one of so many) was the writers’ cafe on the last day. Students shared original work that simply made me dizzy with admiration. But what I loved most was how very kind they were to each other’s offerings. Sharing your poetry or stories is an intimate event, really — and they did it forthrightly, knowing they could trust each other. It was beautiful. I’m so very grateful I had the privilege of visiting IICS.”
Poetry Cafe – we transformed the library into a Poetry Cafe and invited our student writers to share their work with each other over lunchtime. The primary school writers were very enthusiastic. Some students shared more than six poems throughout the course of the event.
The secondary students were less forth coming – possibly because they had been asked to bring their own poetry. Those who did come and contribute were exceptional. Perhaps next time for secondary we will simply invite poets and their fans to come.
The students are asking us when the next cafe will take place – I am wondering about “Poetry day” which is 30 April. Special thanks to Coskun, Cemil and Sezai Bey (both of them) for all their help in creating the cafe.
Follett Library training Ozlem, Lindsey and Maria went to the Follett Library training days in Mid March. They felt the days were excellent value and they came away with new understandings about what we could offer our community through Destiny. They wrote up their reflections and shared it on this Google doc. Follett is prepared to bring their experts to us in Istanbul and we make the most of working with them and our Library colleagues in the other schools in the city.
Puppet theatre comes to Hisar Lindsey sent these photos of EY5 telling stories in the puppet theatre created under the loft.
Istanbul Librarian Network presentation at IASL conference. My personal PLC this year has been to develop my Readers’ Advisor skills. To do this I started a monthly meeting, Book Chat, for our Istanbul Librarians’ Network. We meet once a month and bring three books we have read and enjoyed from our collection. We record these books on our Good Reads group. We have been doing this since October and have all found we can offer our own students better book suggestions because of the knowledge shared at these meetings. Three of us in the network developed a workshop for the IASL conference in the Netherlands at the end of June to describe the work of our network as a PLC. I will not be able to attend as there is no PD funding left but my colleagues at Uskudar American College and Isik school will give the workshop. There were only 13 workshops selected this year and ours was one of them
Challenges and Opportunities
Making sense of statistics. We collect statistics each month to see the use of our print and electronic collections. Below are the stats for both Marmara and Hisar campuses for the physical resources circulation for the past two and a half calendar years. You can see the impact of changes to our circulation policy which came into effect at the start of this school year, snow days and summer borrowing. Ozlem collects this data and maintains the graphs.
I have been monitoring EBSCO over the calendar year of 2014 and the impact of extended essay searches is very interesting. I have started the monitoring process for 2015 as well. We are entering a time of high use for EBSCO and eBrary with Exhibition and Extended Essay reference interviews coming up for grades 6 and 11.
We only choose electronic resources which we can monitor in terms of their use. I am collecting statistics for all of them and considering carefully the value the give and the use they get.
Library a popular place to be. We are finding that grades are now booking the library to have whole grade teaching and presentations. More students are coming to use the quiet, focus of the library for SDLT and teachers are sending groups to work here while the rest of the class is engaged in something else in the classroom. This is both wonderful and challenging at the same time. Our library team is working hard to maintain the balance of student needs in our open plan environment.
Quote for the month
“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” ~ Susan Sontag. We certainly saw this quality in Donna Jo who could speak knowledgeably about frogs, flowers, languages and life.
Grade 6 is starting their work on Exhibition. This involves the students choosing their own topic to research and then researching about it and taking some action. One of the tools to keep track of the information and to cite it correctly is EasyBIb. Here the slide show used to help them set up their EasyBib accounts and to start them thinking about showing where their information came from. This of course is just one step in the process.
Last week (March 9 – 13) we had the honour of hosting Donna Jo Napoli in our school. Donna Jo is the author of more than 70 books for children. She writes for a variety of age groups with some books suitable for the very young and other are better for older teens. Donna Jo worked with many of our students throughout the week. She gave a keynote address to our Middle School students – her topic how she uses myths and fairy tales in her writing. She gave writers’ workshops to grade 4, 5, 6, and 7 throughout the week. She spoke with grade 11 English students about taboo language and with Theory of Knowledge students about language, thinking and knowing. She shared some of her books with our students at Hisar and explained why she had written them.
Donna Jo was our very first writer in residence and we all enjoyed working with her. We hope to have other writers come and help us to develop our skills as writers in the future. Below are a few photos of Donna Jo at work with us.
The benefit of having a writer in school is that: students focus on that author’s writing, they connect with her and ask her specific questions about her books, they are inspired to write themselves, they have deeper conversations about the process of writing and the commitment to improve their own writing.
Snow interrupted Celebrate our reading week. The theme this year was really appropriate as we had three snow days. So our students got to live out the theme of any book, any place, any time – everyone. Thanks to everyone who showed what they were reading through the book photos (pictured above). One of the outcomes we wanted from this week was to make our reading visible. As students see others reading and celebrating what they read they begin to see them as ‘readers’ and their motivation to join the conversations and the reading community grows, (Leland, Lewison, & Harste, 2013, p.21). On the two days we did have of Celebrate our Reading week the children at Hisar created book nooks, they also had their dress up day and enjoyed their teachers’ enacting the story The Paper Bag Princess’. While at Marmara Campus we enjoyed a very successful PTA book swap and the stairs being decorated with book spines.
Anna Wilson – author visit. On Friday 23 January we had Anna Wilson at Marmara Campus working with our students in EY5 – grade 4. She did a wonderfully creative writer’s workshop with the students. I wanted to capture it for our Hisar students so here is the i movie I made about it. Lindsey and I used it with both grade 1 classes at Hisar last week – 12 February. They enjoyed the writing activities Anna introduced to us at Marmara.
Battle of the Books – soft, snow covered launch. We were going to launch the grade 5 and 6 battle of the books today (19 February) but instead we went online to do it. This library blog post was used to launch the concept and this i movie shows the students some of what is involved in a BOB. We have five titles and will hold the final Battle in June. The students now have to read the books and make up practice quiz questions about them.
Extended Essay workshops. Patricia and I worked together on the introduction to the Extended Essay with Grade 11. This year we invited them to read extended essays from previous years, look at sources of information and discuss the process with the seniors in the school. They are currently working on possible topics and creating an abstract to give to potential supervisors.
Challenges and Opportunities.
Writer in residence – Donna Jo Napoli. In just over two weeks time Donna Jo Napoli will be with us. I want to thank the leadership team for their support as I have tried to work out her programme. I will share it with you in the next few days.
Invitation to present a workshop at IASL conference in June. The 44th Annual International Conference & 17th International Forum on Research in School Librarianship is being held from June 28 – July 2, 2015, in Maastricht, The Netherlands. One of the themes is “The school library as a space and place: meeting, sharing, discussing. Collaborative learning and growing.” Two colleagues from our International School Librarian Network and I created a workshop proposal around the use our Network and the Book Chats we have been running since October as a Professional Learning Community. We wanted to show others how to set up PLCs and how our one works. At our last meeting 12 February we looked at using the Inquiry Cycle as a way to investigate our impact as librarians on student learning in our schools. This is a marvellous opportunity.
Quote and possible theme for Celebrate our reading week 2016
“Be awesome! Be a book nut!” — Dr. Seuss
Leland, C., Lewison, M., & Harste, J. C. (2013). Teaching children’s literature: It’s critical! New York: Routledge.
Author Anna Wilson came to work with our students, EY5 – grade 4, at Marmara Campus in January. She gave an imaginative writers’ workshop – asking the students to think about possible hiding places for animals. Here is a video about her visit and the workshop. Thanks to Greenhouse Bookshop for sponsoring her visit with us.
Our celebration of our reading week was shortened but many things were achieved in two days.
Our stairs were decorated with the spines of popular books from our library.
The teachers shared the books they were reading.
Our wonderwall invited people to share which book made them love reading.
The wonderful PTA ran the Book Swap.
Below the gallery of photos are the book quizzes for Friday.
For those who love our daily quizzes here are the links for you to try them at home – don’t forget to add your homeroom teacher’s name as well as your own in the first box
other over lunchtime. The primary school writers were very enthusiastic. Some students shared more than six poems throughout the course of the event.
