On November 10th, during our library class with EY 3/4 we read the book Shark in the Park! by Nick Sharratt and created our own telescope. It is a funny picture book following Timothy Pope on a trip through the park. Is that really a shark he can see?
To create a telescope was my idea, that I took from reading this lovely book.
While working with grade 7 students on their research into an historic event through the eyes of a family member we challenged them to consult three sources BEFORE Google. Those three steps are to start with Destiny webpath, then try Encyclopedia Britannica and finally look at EBSCO exploria. All of these sources offer high quality electronic information and help with citations.
Here is the presentation
Library report August 2015
Successes
Mrs Abizaid
Welcome to Dina Abizaid It is great that we can welcome Dina Abizaid to our library team. Dina is a qualified librarian with experience working in both schools and the public sector. She will be working with EY3/4 – grade 3 in the role of literacy development. She will make a great contribution to the primary classes with information literacy skills and reading development.
Appreciative Inquiry focus for the library team We had our first meeting as a team during whole staff orientation week. In that meeting we began an Appreciative Inquiry into our school library. We wanted to dream about what the library would be like in five years time if it was our perfect library. We all came up with the dream of seeing people in our library reading and enjoying books. We are now working on developing that dream in our weekly team meetings on a Tuesday. We use Google Hangouts so Lindsay can participate. This is a very new process to all of us – I am hopeful that Appreciative Inquiry will help us strengthen the services we provide for the school. Appreciative Inquiry has its origins in business management but recently it has successfully been applied in education and library management.
More classes than ever before have booked to use the reading area in the library We welcome grade 7 and 8 classes signing up for permanent weekly slots in the reading area in the library. This offers the students a change of location as well as access to the whole collection. We are busier than ever and this is a wonderful start to developing our dream.
Summer readers using our print and electronic collections. Many of our students took the opportunity to borrow books over the summer. I received data from EBSCOhost every month showing how the electronic journals we subscribe to are being used by our school community. Obviously they are used most during Exhibition, Personal Project and Extended Essay research times. They were also used during the summer months by a few people. I am promoting these journals to our staff and students this year.
Back to school day We welcomed several new parents as borrowers with our library during back to 
school day at each campus. It is always good to share the news of unlimited borrowing for parents. Also while trying to overcome a double booking in our Marmara library (Grade 3K and EY5) as well as hosting parent seminars, we asked the grade 3 students to use the story sacks to tell a story using puppets to EY5 students. They had a quick 30 minute rehearsal then entertained the younger students. A lovely activity which perplexed one of our new grade 3 students who told his mother that evening that libraries were meant to be places where you only read books.
Sabanci University Library The grade 12 retreat to Sabanci University saw us spending most of our time working in the library. This library had three levels as well as small collaboration rooms. The University librarian generously opened the print and electronic collections to our students to use over the two days. It was a great experience for our students to work on a research essay using the extensive collection of a real University. Thanks to Patricia for organising this retreat. We made a good impression on the head librarian – she complimented us about the way our students were working in a very focused, purposeful manner.
“True learning happens when books and friends, writing and understanding intermingle in a rich soup of participation.” ― R. David Lankes author of the Atlas of New Librarianship
Opportunities and Challenges
I-pads for Hisar Library Lindsey and I will work together to implement the use of 6 i-pads in the Hisar Library. With the changes to the library last year the loss of desktop computers was something Lindsey found most difficult. Laptops were allocated but they were difficult to use safely. Thanks to John and Erhan for helping make the case to have 6 ipads for library use at Hisar. They are imaged and the appropriate apps have been added. After the Bayram break Lindsey and I will work on implementation with specific focus on use of Destiny and reading ebooks to start with. Obviously creating electronic books and presentations will also be explored throughout the year.
Matt Dickinson – author visit On the last Friday before the October break we will host author Matt Dickinson. He will be giving presentations to our students in grades 5 – 10. I am working on the precise programme with coordinators and principals at the moment. Matt has summited Everest and writes fiction for young adult audiences. He was with us three years ago and spoke about the need for grit and self leadership for personal success. Very applicable to our ATL focus this year.
Book losses with mass loans for grade levels and classrooms We are starting to notice book losses from our mass loans to support units of inquiry and classroom libraries. This is quite a stress for the staff and students who want to borrow the books. Linked with this is the difficulty getting these in demand resources into the country. The resources are not available here in Turkey and it can take up to 18 months to replace them under the present system. Over the next few weeks I would like to explore ways to replace lost items more quickly, how to track these loans more effectively (at the moment the resources are issued to the teachers so the loss is against their record) and how to fund the replacements.
Quote of the month: In honour of our grade 12 student retreat
“True learning happens when books and friends, writing and understanding intermingle in a rich soup of participation.”
― R. David Lankes author of the Atlas of New Librarianship
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
While parents were busy meeting homeroom teachers grade 3K developed and performed two stories with puppets for the EY5 children. The students read the story and used the puppets to tell the stories of Ringo the Flamingo and Talulah’s Atishoo. You can see from the photos that the EY5 children loved the stories and the grade 3 students worked well as a team to bring the stories to life.
This year we have two great electronic resources for you to enjoy over summer
Tumblebook a day is for younger students. Every day a new book is available to read on your computer. No need to login or use passwords – just click the link and you can read the book. There is a different book everyday.
Our students in grades EY3 to grade 1 and 2 are familiar with Tumblebooks.
For our older students SYNC is offering two free audiobooks to download for free. Not all the titles are available outside of the USA but many are. This week the two books are Dodger by Terry Pratchett and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Both are downloadable to computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone. There is an app to download to be able to download these books but it is very straightforward.
Enjoy these resources.
This week is ACTION week for grade 6 Exhibition students. Almost every year we have students choose reading and literacy as their passion. This year Rijk was concerned that the Syrian refugee children in Istanbul we missing out on the opportunity to learn to read. He took action. He created a refugee tent in the library and invited students to come and hear a presentation about illiteracy. Students could then read in the tent for a small donation. All money Rijk raised went to the Don Bosco refugee school here in Istanbul so they could purchase school supplies.
We want to share some of the gems that Donna Jo Napoli gave our school community. We have three clips from her key note address given on the 9 March on the topic of fairy tales as an inspiration for her writing. Below is her reflection about her visit in our school. Having an author visit has many positive outcomes – here is a prezzie by teacher librarian Dianne McKenzie and an article showing survey results from the Society of Authors about the value of these visits.
“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.
We did writing workshops and the students happily consulted with each other, gave feed back 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.” – Donna Jo Napoli, March 2015
Library report March 2015
Successes
Donna Jo and students
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.
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
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.
