It is a good thing our theme this year is “Any book, any place, any time – EVERYONE” We can use these snow days to enjoy reading at home. We have ebooks available through your login toDestinyand through Tumblebooks
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
Below are some photos from the Hisar Campus – they created book nooks and had their dress up day on Tuesday. The teachers created a drama from the story ‘The paper bag princess’ They all look fantastic
We were to start our Battle of the Books with grade 5 and 6 classes on Thursday 19th of February but the snow storm has meant we are not at school. Instead we invite them to watch this video and to start to think about who they want in their teams. All of the books are available in the library with one copy per class and some extras online as ebooks (available through Destiny) and as hard cover copies for any class. This is a reading challenge and the final battle will be held in June. As soon as we are back at school you can come and start to borrow the battle books – let the battle begin.
International Language Story Reading (Any suggestions for a better name for this?) We held this event just before International Day – Thursday at Marmara and Friday at Hisar. This year we tried to have secondary students reading to the primary students. This did work well but once again our resources are limited. I am still trying to work on finding a way to develop the International Languages Sections of the library. Thanks so much to all my primary colleagues who hosted and at times read in the sessions. Our librarians, Maria and Ozlem were reading in Swedish and Turkish respectively. Extended Homeroom sessions with grade 7 and 8 The students in these grades have completed a light introduction to using the library and Destiny. They also have had a holiday reading selection time – Thursday before the Winter break we had grade 8 mingling with EY3/4 finding the books they wanted to read over the break. Thanks to the homeroom teachers of grades 7 and 8 for taking the time to be with us.
Greenhouse Book Fair and Book Club Thanks to the PTA our students are buying their own books through Greenhouse Bookshop. So much money was raised in this first part of the year that we have been able to purchase some new titles for the library and begin our book selection for a future “Battle of the Books”
Challenges and Opportunities
Coming events: January Author visit – Anna Wilson – and launch of Battle of the Books February Love reading week. March Writer in residence – Donna Jo Napoli
Author visit to Marmara Primary – Anna Wilson will be with us at the Marmara Campus on Friday 23 January. She will be working with EY5 – grade 3 in the morning and then with upper primary students in a writers workshop in the afternoon.
Battle of the Books – well a skirmish. I promised to keep you posted. We have selected some titles and will trial this when the titles ordered start to arrive. Many of the titles are coming through Greenhouse Bookshop. I offered this as an option for exploratory for middle school – but no one selected it so it looks like this will be a grade 5 and 6 event.
Possible move to new location Thank you for the opportunity to be involved in the workshop with the architects. I have also visited Robert College’s brand new library. They redesigned and refurbished their old library. It is truly impressive. My goal for January is to create a vision document about the future of the libraries at IICS.
Orders this is a big job for the library and the form changes every year. I will work with John in the new year to see if there is any way we can improve the system and the forms involved. This year the Google doc did not print out well.
Statistics Ozlem has started to gather circulation statistics for the library we are already well up on borrowing for this year. I will analyse the data and write more in the January report.
Inspirational quote for this season
“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!”
― Neil Gaiman
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.
Last week our grade 4H class met with Grade 4A students attending CLIP – Colégio Luso-Internacional do Porto in Portugal using Skype. The students in each class talked about one of their favourite books and why it was a favourite. Our students were pleased to find out that they knew many of the books their new friends in Portugal spake about. Roald Dahl was the author of many of the books, with Matilda, Esio Trot and the Twits being discussed. This book chat was organised through the International School Library Month activities of IASL (International Association of School Libraries). This was a very positive experience promoting reading and libraries in both our schools. This kind of Interntional exchange allows our students to see that they have many things in common (enjoying the same books) with other students around the world and that they have something valuable to contribute to other students (offering new titles for them to explore). It also adds to the goal of creating international mindedness in our library – we do this with our collection and now we can do this with book chats with students in other countries too. Thanks to the librarians and grade 4 teachers at CLIP and IASL. Grade 4D will have their book chat with a grade 4 class at CLIP next week.
This week as part of the Grade 1 inquiry into Family traditions and values Mrs Hodges read the book Auntie Yang’s great soybean picnic by Ginnie Lo to her grade 1 classes. After the story the students all tried to pick up beans with chop sticks. It was a fun way to see the ideas in the book in action.
This lesson was in connection with the Unit of Inquiry and one of the ways we try to support the units from the library is to create some fun ways for children to explore the concepts through literature and play. The learner profile attributes expressed though this book are caring and reflection.
