Helping your child with research
During Parent Teacher conferences at Marmara Campus this presentation was given to help parents know how to support their children with research from home.
Presenting at ECIS librarians conference about our school
Last week I attended the ECIS triennial librarian conference and gave a presentation about our school’s journey creating a curriculum to support our students’ learning with technology. We call that curriculum the ‘New LIteracies’ and the New Literacies team this year includes me, Amanda Bond, Claire Wachowiak, Brycen Davis, Erhan Toksoz and John D’Arcy. Here is the slideshare. I learned so much at conference – there will be more posts to come…
Family traditions – literature to support PYP
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.
Library report – August 2014
Library report – August 2014
Successes: Hisar library
Before and After at Hisar Library
Here are some before and after photos (before on the left and after on the right). I will be adding more photos to the next report (and possibly every report this year).
THANK YOU to Judith, Jane and Coskun for all their time, ideas and attention to detail. To have library shelves that all look the same is such an improvement already.
THANK YOU to Lindsey, Arin and Ozlem for coming back to work a day early to take all the books out of the boxes and put them on the shelves. It will make a huge difference to the students and staff at Hisar that the books are arranged in similar areas. Last year the chapter books were in three different locations around the tiny library. Also a big thank you to the maintenance team at HIsar for taking such good care of the boxes of books over the break.
While I was at Hisar last week I asked some of our students who had been at the school last year if we had more books or fewer books in the library. They confidently answered – more books.
Finally a heartfelt THANKS to Lindsey who is working out how to run classes in the new library while it is still a work in progress. There are still some things to add, change, develop.
Welcome to Maria Hodges
Mrs Hodges enjoying a book with a student
Maria joins us from Shanghai, China. She was teaching at the British School there. Serife has moved on to teach in the Diploma Programme so we needed someone to teach the EY3 – grade 3 literacy support classes. Fortunately while Maria was here in March on a school visit with her son Isak (who is in grade 10 this year) she told Jane of her interest in children’s literature and being a school librarian. We are so pleased to welcome Maria to our team.
Challenges
Hisar library still a work in progress As with any huge change there are adjustments to be made. Lindsey is currently working without the projector and screen, a dedicated catalogue computer and laptops for student use. Lindsey has summarised the situation with a poster where the proposed new loft will be – “Watch this space…”
Opportunities
Alec Williams – storyteller at Hisar Thursday 25th September. Alec has been a guest in our school a couple of times over the past few years. He is an accomplished storyteller and this will be a great treat for the staff and students at Hisar. Last year Alec did a guest skype interview with Michelle Dirlek’s class when they were inquiring into stories.
Lots of new books coming your way All the books which arrived in our shipment have been unpacked, checked against invoices and put in the back room ready for processing. Ozlem processes and catalogues 10 – 20 new books each week. This year she is emailing teachers to let them know of books they may be interested in – film studies, economics, guidance – as we think of the area of interest and staff members involved we email them. Obviously this cannot be done with every book but it is a good start.
FInal thought inspired by the new library shelving at Hisar
Th’ first thing to have in a libry is a shelf. Fr’m time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th’ shelf is th’ main thing.
— “Books”. Mr Dooley Says.
Finley Peter DUNNE (1867-1936)
Amanda Bond
Teacher Librarian
Environmental Science – finding articles online
Classes have begun at IICS and already our students are hard at work researching information for their courses. The grade 11 Environmental Science class will be using EBSCO and Google to find journal and newspaper articles. These slides show the tools students can use to locate “good” information.
Ask an expert – storyteller Alec Williams
Last week Ms Dirlik’s Prep Class (5 year olds) interviewed a storyteller, Alec Williams to ask him some questions for their inquiry into stories. Mr Williams was in England and we were in Turkey so we used Skype. The first question Mr Williams was asked was,”Do stories need a title?” Being a storyteller Mr Williams told a story to answer the question. Over the 30 minute interview Mr Williams used stories and books to answer all the questions. At the end we had enough time for Mr Williams to tell the story “How dog and man became friends.” It had actions and five parts. At the end Mr Williams asked the Prep students to try to tell the story to someone else that afternoon – to their family or friends. One of his beliefs is that everyone enjoys hearing stories and everyone can tell stories. The video below shows Alec speaking about stories and reading. We want to thank Mr Williams for helping Prep answer all their questions. They not only learned about stories but also that many times an expert is the greatest source for information in an inquiry. To book Alec you can email him directly at alec@alecwilliams.co.uk
Library displays – celebrating the library visually
Welcome to the new area of the IICS Library website. We want to celebrate the amazing displays created for the library. Here is a little taste of what is to come….
Empty display stand… now to choose some more and wrap them up.
Student answering the question.
Library report May – changes
Library report May 2014
Successes:
LTEN conference both times in the library
IICS New Literacies Team May 2014
At the start of the month our school hosted the LTEN conference in the library. The first Every LTEN conference, held on 27th April, 2007 was also hosted in our library. It was the perfect example of positive disruption. The Marmara library team, assisted by Cemil and his team, relocated all the MYP/DP collection to temporary area to make room for all the delegates. On the day of the conference Ozlem and Serife helped with registrations. Amanda gave a workshop with Caroline, hosted Kim Cofino from Japan on a Google Hangout and set up student hosts to tour the school.
Marmara Library new layout
The Saturday after the conference Ozlem and I were at school because of the student led conferences so we used our time to rearrange the layout of the shelving for the MYP/DP collection. The new arrangement is more open. It means the library can be used by large groups. We have kept a smaller working space in the centre of the library as well as some individual working spaces.
Greenhouse Book Fairs
We are grateful to Greenhouse Bookshop for running two successful fairs – one at Marmara and the other at Hisar. They were both scheduled for the student led conference days but with the bad weather on the weekend of the Hisar fair they were flexible and agreed to postpone it to the day of the picnic the Tuesday after. Lindsey had about 400TL to spend on books for the Hisar library. Our PTA has decided to hold Greenhouse book fairs at each campus next year, one in fall and the other in spring. They are also investigating running the Greenhouse Book Club a few times each year.
Book Depository experiment
Mrs Bond with Juliette McIver’s book Toucan
The restriction to ordering once a year means that any books that are popular during the year, any changes or developments to units of inquiry or professional readings have to wait until the next ordering period and the August delivery the following year. A couple of months ago I ordered 8 books through Book Depository which provides free delivery to Turkey. Only 8 because there seems to be an 80 Euro maximum to go through Turkish customs without attracting extra charges. All book arrived within three weeks of the order. This may well be the way to go for future ordering. I would like to set aside more money from the library budget next year for ongoing purchases.
Opportunities
The HIsar library and computer lab is being redesigned right now. It has been a great opportunity to design mobile shelving and book bins at the right height for our lower primary students. Thanks to Jane, Judith and Coskun for the opportunity to dream and plan.
Library Feedback
This year I used two open ended questions with colleagues and primary students. Instead of a Google form which gets only a small response from colleagues I want to thank Angela, Chris and Joe for allowing me to take some meeting time to ask for paper and pen responses. I am currently analysing the results. I want to use the information to inform the 2014- 2015 library goals. I have the raw data if you would like to see that too. So far it is clear people appreciate the staff in both libraries with many comments about how helpful, friendly and welcoming they are.
Challenges
Library policies The Library team have begun to create some important guiding policies and procedures for the library. So far we have completed the Circulation Policy and procedures. We have increased the borrowing privileges of every year level – except grade 6 and above which had unlimited borrowing privileges already. We will share these with John and see what the next steps are in communicating these with our school community. This is important work for our team and will need to continue next year.
Library quote – in honour of the Hisar library redesign…
“Congratulations on the new library, because it isn’t just a library. It is a spaceship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you — and most of all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life.
[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]”
― Isaac Asimov
Feedback
I like to borrow books
I like to borrow the books
This week we started to seek feedback from our students and staff. To keep things simple we asked our primary students to complete two statements
1. What I like about our library…
2. If I had a chance to make a new library I would…
Not scientific at all and definitely not a Google form. We also have a wonderwall question “What do you like about our library?” We wanted to keep the questions light but purposeful. I have been trying to input all the data as I go though I did fall behind by the end of the week. We have yet to consult with the secondary students. Staff were asked specific questions about what were the strengths of the library and how could we improve. I think this method has been useful to gauge student opinion. It has offered some surprising results – analysis will take place and results will be the subject matter of a future blog post.
Pre School and Prep are involved being invited to draw in response to “What I like about our library”. The children drew and we wrote their ideas as they dictated them. Next week they will be asked about creating a new library.
This one is clearly about listening to a story
I like to listen
LTEN in the library
LTEN is the Learning and Technology Exchange Network. It is a network of teachers in schools in Istanbul, Turkey and European countries in our region. It began life in our library here at IICS April 27, 2012 and last week we hosted the 7th meeting on Friday May 2. We had to move many of the shelves to make space this time. Watch for a post next week about the new layout in the library.
The meetings and workshops were all recorded. Take a look and see what happened. Teachers are learners too and LTEN celebrates our learning journey together in Turkey.
Erhan Toksoz, Tom Johnson, Claire Wachowiak, Amanda Bond, Caroline Lewicky, Brycen Davis, John D’Arcy – IICS New Literacies Team
