Author Archives: Ms Bortolato

The Library Young Team with Graeme Armstrong in Bannerman

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Bannerman High School is among 10 secondary schools across Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire to take part in a project co-run with Renfrewshire School Libraries. The project is called “The Library Young Team” and it is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

For our third, and final, author visit for this project we welcomed acclaimed author Graeme Armstrong who delivered a thought-provoking and inspiring talk to all our S3 pupils, who left the workshop theater buzzing!

Graeme Armstrong spoke about his experiences of youth gangs when he was our pupils’ age, and how bleak life was during that time – as he recalls in his novel “The Young Team“. He thankfully climbed out of that downward spiral and now is using his life experience as an instrument to raise awareness of gang culture’s dangers, and to improve young people’s lives. Thank you Graeme!

This Project is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

Smithycroft in April

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Our librarian Mr Hassett has created this wonderful display to show a selection of different kinds of books in the library – perfect for a busy pupil looking for a quick browse at library books, but also perfect as a snapshot of the wide range of entertainment that the library has on offer for everyone! 📚📖

World Autism Acceptance Week

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World Autism Acceptance Week runs from 2nd to 8th April 2024.

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability which affects how people communicate and interact with the world. More than one in 100 people are on the autism spectrum and there are around 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK (source).

Unfortunately, the school being closed for a well-deserved spring break means that our pupils will not be in the library to explore our collection and display for this week, but school librarians can be trusted to make sure autism visibility and acceptance are important elements of our stock representation all year round. Here is a gallery of fiction and non-fiction books which feature autistic characters, or are written by autistic authors!

 

The Library Young Team with Alan Bissett, and more

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Bannerman High School is among 10 secondary schools across Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire to take part in a project co-run with Renfrewshire School Libraries. The project is called “The Library Young Team” and it is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

Our second session for this project consisted in a brilliant visit from Scottish author Alan Bissett, where a group of S3 boys engaged with topics such as toxic masculinity, lad culture, and consent. Alan Bissett used his most recent book “Lads: a Guide to Respect and Consent” and his collaboration with Police Scotland’s campaign “Don’t Be That Guy” as foundations for a conversation with young boys on empathizing with the issue of women’s safety and giving advice on how to behave respectfully around girls and women. He also spoke about how socio-cultural expectations on boys and gender roles create a damaging barrier that prevents young men from talking about their emotions and mental health with potentially dangerous consequences. This useful advice was intervaled with some light-hearted banter and our S3 responded very positively to this visit – we all enjoyed it, thank you Alan!

This Project is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

Genre tasting at the Parents’ Evening 🍽

More events happened in the library! Ms Greer from English and Ms Bortolato organised a book trattoria in the library for the latest parents’ evening and family learning.
The library got transformed in a little restaurant where parents and their children could choose from a menu of genres, familiarize themselves with junior fiction books and talk about their thoughts on the books they tasted.

The Manga Club contributed to this evening with a Manga Appetizers station where patrons could snack on manga history (typed up by our wee club members!) and famous comics while they waited to be seated. 🥡🥢

Smithycroft Roundup – March!

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The past couple of weeks have seen a planning for World Book Day and meetings with English Department to improve the service we provide to our dear readers. For World Book Day, the well-established worldwide celebration of reading for pleasure, Mr Hassett set up a spectacular book display in the centre of the library, and Ms Bortolato organised a little party in the library with bookish activities and snacks, which were enjoyed by Smithycroft’s library regulars. Over the past week, the pupils have also received their £1 book token which will allow them to get a free World Book Day Book or £1 off other books!

At the time of writing, today is also International Women’s Day, so a new display honouring this has been set up in the library. We try every month to have a non-fiction display that is informative and promotes equality and diversity – so with March being Women’s History Month, this will hopefully catch our readers’ eyes and enable young people to learn about women’s contributions and history!

Bannerman Roundup

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March is another exciting month for Bannerman! We have quite a few events organised for all, starting this week as Thursday 7th March was 🌟📚World Book Day📚🌟, the annual worldwide celebration of reading for pleasure: the library was open at lunch with snacks and book-related activities available – which the pupils enjoyed as the before & after photo demonstrates! Last week, all pupils also received their £1 World Book Day token with a short presentation on how & where to use it.

world book day display
table of world book day activities world book days activities on table

For a family learning evening later in March, Ms Bortolato and the English Department are working on activities to involve parents into the junior fiction their kids read. Pupils from our Manga Club contributed by writing up a short history of Manga to place on the genre table at the event! 💻💭🗯

pupils at bannerman writing a presentation on manga history

That’s all for the moment! We’ll be back at the end of the Month for another update! 📖

The Library Young Team – Session 1

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Bannerman High School is among 10 secondary schools across Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire to take part in a project co-run with Renfrewshire School Libraries. The project is called “The Library Young Team” and it is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund. It will see three thought-provoking authors visit the participating schools to talk to S3/4/5 pupils about topics as gang culture, crime, toxic masculinity, and ways out of these suffocating environments – as well as share some of their writing journeys.

For the first session of this project, it was great to have Brian Conaghan at Bannerman High School introducing his book “Treacle Town” to a crowd of S6 pupils, talking about gang culture in Scotland but also giving writing advice to senior pupils working on their English portfolio. The project will see Alan Bissett and Graeme Armstrong visiting the school in the next couple of months.

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brian conaghan at the school assembly

 

This Project is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

 

LGBTQ History Month in Bannerman 🏳️‍🌈📚🎉

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February is LGBTQ History Month! A wonderful opportunity to uncover the rich tapestry of contributions and impact made by LGBTQ individuals across History, Literature, STEM, Music, Art and more. Such contributions are slowly becoming part of the school curriculums and becoming common knowledge, which is why it’s important to keep raising awareness on LGBTQ History.

In fact, initiatives like these help bring LGBTQ history-makers to the forefront of the educational offer to our young people, creating a landscape of equal representation and visibility for this community which is still marginalized in several fields. We continue to celebrate LGBTQ history so that year after year, it will get better and better! ❤🧡💛💚💙💜

You can also learn about LGBTQ History by borrowing e-books and audiobooks on the Libby app thanks to your school library card. There is a teens’ list on Libby:

Teens – Young Adult – LGBT+ – Glasgow Libraries – OverDrive

Pertaining the historical aspect, the librarian would like to put a focus on this LGBTQ History source available on Libby:

Title details for Stonewall by Ann Bausum - Available

Find out more online at:

LGBT+ History Month at lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk

LGBT+ History Month 2024 at Stonewall

LGBT+ History Month: Everything You Need to Know at The Proud Trust

New Arrivals in Our Manga Collection

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Just because it will never look this immaculate again – luckily so, as the librarian is looking forward to seeing the expressions of joy and surprise on the faces of our keen manga readers as they borrow all these newly-arrived books! These here are just some of our most requested titles, but there is plenty more to explore in the library: Naruto, One Piece, Komi Can’t Communicate and many many more!

 

Manga club in Bannerman is always in full swing and we keep coming up with new activities and games. Here are some of them:

  • Guess the anime theme song (we play a theme song on Spotify and guess)
  • Who would say that? (we pick a widely popular manga and read out a pivotal speech bubble, the other club members have to guess which character says that line)
  • Colouring pages, always popular and by request
  • Blooket manga quiz that the pupils regularly update
  • Guess who? (we describe a manga character and have to guess who it is)
  • Learning to draw manga-style with our how-to books
  • Making bookmarks inspired by manga
  • Discussing the manga the pupils have been reading, exchanging recommendations
  • Manga Multiverse: we think of mashups of two different manga and what it would be like in terms of plot, characters etc, for example Demon Slayer x Tokyo Ghoul.