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December 2022 Roundup – Shawlands Academy School Library

It has been a quiet month in the Library throughout December as prelims have been taking place. However, our excellent Fare worker allowed us to host a Pop-Up Library in their room during lunchtimes where pupils could still come and choose a selection of books and play games. We’ve got an exciting itinerary planned for 2023, so stay tuned!

Trending: December Booklists

Best New Children’s Books – Topptsa

Bookbug’s Book of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – Love Reading For Kids

Books of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Books Roundup – Guardian

New Releases – Epic Reads

Literary and Cultural Events – January

9th – 19th St Mungo’s Festival (Glasgow, Scotland)

19th – 5th Celtic Connections (Glasgow, Scotland)

26th – 29th Burns and Beyond (Edinburgh, Scotland)

 Book Buzz

BBC

Book Riot

Buzzfeed

Epic Reads

The Erdvening Standard

The Globe and Mail

The Guardian

Huffpost

The New York Times

The Scotsman

The Telegraph

The Times

Times of India

 

 

Reading Resolutions: 12 months, 12 challenges

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Happy New Year! I started back to school on Monday, and with the Library being closed for Prelims, I’m spending my time planning what to do in my first full year as the St Margaret Mary’s Secondary and St Oswald’s Secondary Librarian.  The first Library tweet of the year asked about your Reading Resolutions for 2023 – have you made any yet? If not, this blog post is here to help you! I’m setting 12 reading challenges, one for every month of the year. Pupils who complete all the challenges will get a certificate and a wee prize in January 2024. The most important thing to remember is that you should enjoy the books you are reading, and if you don’t like a book, don’t force yourself to finish it. Teachers, you are of course welcome to get in on this too! Continue reading →

Storytelling for wellbeing special session!

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During the “Storytelling for wellbeing” club, the young people have the opportunity to find new ways of expressing their emotional and mental health concerns. They have been sharing stories through different medium (board games, dream log, craft…).

During the last sessions, they developed their life perspectives and empathy skills by reading short stories and focusing on the characters emotions.

We looked at each of the characters and talked about their color and found a bead that went along with the character emotions. We discussed characters feelings and how we sometimes show those feelings.

Then, they had to associate a color to each emotions and make a bracelet of the characters emotions or with their own emotions. The beads help kids think about others and the world around them.

Making empathy bracelets is as a way to develop social-emotional awareness and self-awareness of others and how they feel. When you use a hands-on activity like this bead activity to teach abstract concepts like empathy, children can stimulate thinking and allow kids to grasp the perspectives of others.

This was a great group and individual activity, they had fun!

Storytelling for Mental Health project/Book Week Scotland 2022

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November was a very busy month in the library. Not only did we have Book Week Scotland, but we also had a trip to the Mitchell library and our Storytelling Group have also been busy!

 

Book Week Scotland/Metaphrog trip

Our theme for Book Week Scotland was ‘Scotland’s Stories’ so we decided the best thing to celebrate Scottish stories was to set up a literary map of Scotland! From the Borders to Shetland,  the Western Isles to Edinburgh, we displayed a wide range of stories set in Scotland.

 

 

 

 

We also took the opportunity to take some of our S1s to the Mitchell for a talk and exhibition by Glasgow-based comic artists Metaphrog. Everyone had a great morning and hopefully some budding comic book artists took some inspiration!

 

Storytelling Group

We also continued our weekly storytelling group this month. Over the last few weeks we had been working with Lego and some other crafty materials to create our own characters. Once we had done this, we then gave them a back story, including a habitat, likes/dislikes and even thought about any quests or antics they would get up to. There were some excellent creations with one of out pupils even drawing out a whole map of their characters’ world!

November 2022 Roundup – Shawlands Academy School Library

November has been our busiest month so far this year! With Book Week Scotland festivities, author visits, and general school library mayhem on the go, it was fun times all around.

Author visits:

Ash Dickinson is an award-winning slam poet who joining us for a lunchtime visit where he discusssed his inspirations, his work as well as some fun exercises for pupils to explore their inner poet.

Neil Slorance is a Glasgow-based author/illustrator, best known for his work on Dragon Fun, Doctor Who comics, and for his pet tortoise Herman who went viral in 2015. Neil chatted with our entire S1 year group about what it’s like being a comic book artist and even taught us some drawing tips.

Maisie Chan is an award-winning Glasgow based author whose book Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths won her the Branford Boase award, the YA Prize, and the Jhalak Prize. Our Schools of Literature group have been reading Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu so Maisie popped along to chat about the novel and the rest of her works to some of our S2 Schools of classes.

Book Week Scotland: Fantastic turn out for our range of Book Week Scotland activities this year. We worked with Coffee Culture to host a Biblio Bistro in the Library where pupils and staff could grab a hot drink and peruse a selection of book stalls that displayed books tying into this year’s BWS themes. On Wednesday, our S4/6 quiz masters created and hosted a quiz. Our Book Swap was an outstanding success! We had 8 tables brimming with books and were left with a remaining two boxes of books saved for next year’s swap.

Mitchel Visit: We enjoyed a lovely visit to the Mitchell Library with our Advanced Higher Physical Education classes where the knowledgeable staff delivered tutorials of their eResources such as ProQuest and took us on a tour of the iconic building.

Schools of Literature: We created a our own mini biographical zines of famous/influential people in our lives using the books from our Equality and Empowerment and History sections to tie in with this year’s Nonfiction November. We also enjoyed an afternoon of children’s book storytelling, reading from our favourite children’s books using props from the wonderful School Library Outreach service located in the Mitchell Library

Book Group: Now that we’ve finished Edward Ross’ excellent Gamish: A Graphic History of Gaming, we’ve now moved on to the bestselling I Am Malala by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai. We’re not even through the prologue and it’s already prompted lots of thought provoking discussion.

Trending: November Booklists

Best New Children’s Books – Topptsa

Bookbug’s Book of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – Love Reading For Kids

Books of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Books Roundup – Guardian

New Releases – Epic Reads

Literary and Cultural Events – December

3rd-5th Winter Tales Book Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland)

 Book Buzz

BBC

Book Riot

Buzzfeed

Epic Reads

The Erdvening Standard

The Globe and Mail

The Guardian

Huffpost

The New York Times

The Scotsman

The Telegraph

The Times

Times of India

 

 

A good not too bad terrible news…

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The school library is getting refurbished!

In October, the school informed me that the library will be getting refurbished! It was a project pending since last year and couldn’t believe it was going ahead. But this time, it appeared to be more concrete since they gave me a frame time. The work will be done in approximately four weeks.

So, I started to invite ALL the S1 and S2 classes to come in, to borrow as many books as possible. The more they borrow the less I have to pack.

Later, I gathered my little army of minions AKA the library helpers to organise the work and to start packing. Pupils selected books by subjects to then been delivered in every department of the school:

 

The rest of the books were packed in boxes to be kept in a storage room:

 

The library helpers did an amazing job! In less than a week the whole library was packed!! We celebrated by having a small cupcake party:

The library cleared, the real work could finally start:

I’m really looking forward to welcome pupils and staff back into a beautiful new brand library!!

#Breakingnews: it appears that it will take more time than announced…Keep posted!

 

 

Breaking news: St Mungo’s is a GOLD rights respecting school!

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Breaking news: St Mungo’s is a GOLD Rights Respecting School!

 

October 2022 Roundup – Shawlands Academy School Library

With the mid-term break sandwiched between the beginning and end of the month, October felt like it was over before it started! We still managed to squeeze in some great activities over the last few weeks, so read on to see what we’ve been up to.

Schools of Literature: Our group has finished reading Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu by Maisie Chan and are currently finalising our paper lampshade disco balls that tie in with the book. Our Tweet was liked and shared by Maisie Chan who absolutely loved the activity!

Crafternoons: Pupils participated in our Black Out Poetry crafternoon event to celebrate National Poetry Dlay. We used pages from 1984 by George Orwell (this was a faulty copy with missing pages!) to create some amazing poetry. Most pupils were not aware of blackout poetry so found und the event fun and education, and English teachers participated too. The blackout potery was then displayed in the Library.

Literature Trails: The School Library is working with our Values Ambassadors to create monthly literature trails around school. We select 10 books on a theme and create informational posters about each book that teachers display in their classroom windows. This month we promoted Black History Month and chose a wonderful selection of titles which include:

  1. Becoming: Adapted for Young Readers by Michelle Obama
  2. Black and British by David Olusoga
  3. Young, Gifted and Black: Meet 52 Black heroes from Past and Present by Jamia Wilson
  4. Musical Truth: A Musical History of Modern Black Britain in 28 Songs by Jeffrey Boakye
  5. Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah
  6. Onyeke and the Academy of the Sun by Tola Okogwu
  7. The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta
  8. Black Artists Shaping the World by Sharna Jackson 
  9. Superheroes: Inspiring Stories of Secret Strength by Sophia Thakur, illustrated by Denzell Dankwah
  10. Timelines from Black History: Leaders, Legends, Legacies by Mireille Harper and DK Publishing

Pupil Library Collective: Our Pupil Library Collective is officially underway! Teams have been set up, roles have been established, and tasks have been delegated. We are currently working together on ideas for the design of the bulletin board outside the library, themed book lists to feature in the school library newsletter, and activities being planned for Book Week Scotland in November.

eResource Workshops: The School Libraries’ eResource Workshops have started back up just in time for upcoming study leave. The workshops connect pupils with valuable online resources available from Glasgow Libraries and other scholarly and authoritative information and are tailored to the subject and year group.

Publications: Pupils can submit book reviews, art, poetry, or short stories to be published in either the monthly School Library newsletter or the quarterly School Libraries’ eMagazine, Swatch. Access the current and previous issues of Swatch through these links:  Autumn 22 Summer 22, Spring 22, Winter 21, Autumn 21, Summer 21, Spring 21, Winter 20, Autumn 20

Trending: October Booklists

Best New Children’s Books – Topptsa

Bookbug’s Book of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – Love Reading For Kids

Books of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Books Roundup – Guardian

Trending Books – Epic Reads

Literary and Cultural Events – November

2nd-5th: Faclan: The Hebridean Book Festival | An Lanntair Stornoway (Stornoway, Scotland)

3rd-6th: Push the Boat Out: Edinburgh’s International Poetry Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland)

11th-13th: A Write Highland Hoolie! Mallaig’s Book Festival (Mallaig, Scotland)

13th:  Robert Louis Stevenson Day (Edinburgh, Scotland)

14th-20th: Book Week Scotland

24th-27th: Hay Festival Winter Weekend (Hayon-Wye, Wales)

26th-27th: Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival (Argyll & Bute, Scotland)

 

Literary Awards & Prizes

Winners:

The Booker Prize

Books Are My Bag Reader Choice Awards

Diverse Book Awards

Information Book Award

Little Rebel Awards

Na Duaisean Litreachais | Gaelic Literature Awards

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

 

Book Buzz

BBC

Book Riot

Buzzfeed

Epic Reads

The Evening Standard

The Globe and Mail

The Guardian

Huffpost

The New York Times

The Scotsman

The Telegraph

The Times

Times of India

All Saints -Chessnuts, New Books, Black History Month, Book Club

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A busy few weeks in All Saints Library!

The Chessnuts Chess Club has started on Mondays at lunchtime. We’ve had a great turn out of players, some new to the game and some improving their skills and helping out the others.

We received lots of new fiction and non-fiction stock as well. A packed New Books display.

We are celebrating Black History Month with our 3 displays of amazing titles.

Our senior helpers Amber and Reagan have been hard at work; categorising books by genre, putting up our Halloween display and starting our new lunchtime book club on Tuesdays (with Amanda).

 

Lochend – Comics, Lattes, Black History Month and LGBTQI+ Safe Space

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It’s been a busy few weeks here in Lochend Library.

We had a visit from the wonderful Neil Slorance who inspired our S2 class to create their own comic characters. This was part of our EAL Reading Group Project which was supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

We are celebrating Black History Month with our displays of non-fiction and fiction. Come and check them out.

The LGBTQI+ safe space is taking place in the library at lunchtime on Fridays. Pop along if you fancy a chat in a welcoming space 🙂

And finally, a big thanks to our senior barista students, Nadine and Aiden, for the two free iced lattes. Delicious!

Photos below: