Category Archives: All

Summer fun @St Mungo

This summer, your librarian has been busy preparing for the new school year with a lot of exciting activities. I attended some fantastic training sessions to discover new and unique ways to create stories. One of the highlights was a workshop organized by Markie, my fantastic colleague from Shawlands! She demonstrated how to use tarot cards as a creative tool, helping us explore new ways to inspire and develop fresh narrative ideas. I’m thrilled to bring these innovative techniques into our library programs and make creative writing even more engaging for everyone!

I’ve also been working on some exciting new projects, like planning future author visits. Stay tuned—you’ll be hearing more about that soon!

And of course, I’ve been getting the library all set for the new year by weeding out old books and cataloguing new ones.

Can’t wait to welcome everyone back to the library!

Library Update: Genrefication

Leave a reply

Hi and welcome back, everyone!

While everyone else was away over the summer, the library has had a bit of a makeover! This month, we’re going to take a quick look at our new genre system, to make sure you know where to find your next favourite read.

So what does “genrefication” mean? Essentially, our Fiction section is now divided into five genre categories: General, Imaginative, Dynamic, Romantic, and Intriguing. The books have all been reshelved so that they’re physically grouped together into these five broad areas. Each book has also been outfitted with a brand-new coloured sticker on its spine, which corresponds to the section it came from, as follows:

Furthermore, every section is clearly labelled, with signage explaining what sort of books you can find there, as well as giving examples:

But not everything has changed! The books within each section are arranged in the familiar author-surname order, allowing you to find your favourite writer more quickly than ever.

Hopefully you’ll find the new arrangement more intuitive to use — and it’ll lead to some great discoveries, too!

Summer Reading at Holyrood

Leave a reply

Reading Challenge

The S2 Library Helpers were so keen to encourage reading over the holidays, that they made up a Holyrood Reading Challenge. They chatted about this over a few lunchtimes and came up with a giant whiteboard of ideas. We then wrote the challenges on post-it notes that went into a lucky dip jar for participants to choose from. Here are some of the challenges:

Read in bed for 10 mins. every night for a week
Read in your garden or in a park
Read a page out loud to your pet
Read while you’re waiting for your toast to pop up
Listen to an eBook on the Libby app

It was a lot of fun, and we all enjoyed choosing a challenge and receiving a bookmark and merit for taking part. I’m now looking forward to hearing how everyone got on, and also what ideas the Helpers will have for our new term.

S2 Helpers came up with ideas

Seniors enjoyed the Challenge too!

While school’s out, school librarians continue to carry out essential work, joining up hundreds of new members arriving into S1, re-organising and improving collections, ordering new books, creating resources and planning projects and activities for the coming year.

I’ve been reviewing some of the pupil feedback from throughout the year, and noticed how much S1 enjoy their lunchtimes in the library. And also that some readers would like a little more help in choosing books. So I’ve ordered new board games for lunchtimes (chess, snakes & ladders, Connect4, Uno, Boggle and others), and re-organised a book display stand at the entrance to highlight new genres, including : Afrofuturism, Eco-stories, Sci-fi & Dystopian, Animal stories, Scottish authors, and Re-told fairy tales. There’s also a space for – Recommended by You, as pupil recommendations are one of the best ways to find a good book. Hopefully our keen readers will like the new display and make suggestions for anything else they would like to see included.

I’ve also enjoyed some time off to go on trips and celebrations including:

Edinburgh Castle, to watch ‘Harry Potter’ on giant screen, with live film music performed by the RSNO
the ‘Discovering Degas’ exhibition at the wonderful Burrell Collection.
my daughter’s graduation from Glasgow Caledonian University. (nice to think that some of our own Holyrooders are also studying there, I’m sure I saw a few familiar faces at the ceremony).

Hope everyone’s had a lovely holiday, look forward to seeing you back next week !

Miss Kindness

P7 transition summer program- St Mungo’s library activity

Leave a reply

As part of our summer transition program for future S1 pupils, St Mungo’s library organised a day filled with exciting activities. The highlight of the day was an engaging vision board creation session, where pupils crafted their own personalised vision boards.

This activity encouraged creativity, goal-setting, and self-expression, providing a fun and meaningful way for pupils to visualise their aspirations for the upcoming school year.

It was inspiring to see how creative the pupils turned out to be, daring to dream big and set ambitious goals for their future.

June 2024 Roundup – Shawlands Academy School Library

Leave a reply

Library Mascot: We welcome our new School Library mascot, Maximus, designed by ‘C’ in S4 who’s winning design was voted by pupils and made by the talented Miss West, School Librarian at John Paul Secondary School. As mascot, Maximus will be our sidekick for the upcoming school year and will help promote reading for pleasure on our displays at during activities as well as appear in future School Library Twitter photos.

Bookmarks: Our winning bookmark designs have arrived in time for the 2024-25 school year, and we can’t wait to show them off. The bookmarks will be revealed and available come August.

Zine Workshop: We had a fabulous time with Martha from Glasgow Zine Library who delivered an engaging lunchtime zine making workshop in the School Library. Pupils enjoyed browsing the selection of the GZL collection which inspired them to create their own. We really look forward to more collaboration with the GZL in the future.

Senior Libby Refreshers: We visited some English classes to deliver Libby refreshers for our senior pupils in hopes of inspiring them read for leisure over the summer. Libby by Overdrive is an app subscribed to by Glasgow Life Libraries which has thousands of fiction, nonfiction, and magazine titles. There is something for everyone.

Swatch: The Summer issue of Swatch, the Glasgow School Libraries’ eMagazine is now live. Packed with booklists, an exclusive interview with Maisie Chan, and lots of fun stuff including a recipe for salt and chilli wedges, an origami paper fan craft, and a quiz. Interactive back issues are available on the Library Channel on Teams.

Book of the Day:

03.06: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

06.06: Lionheart Girl by Yaba Badoe

07.06: An Amazing Animal Atlas of Scotland by Anders Frang

10.06: Furthermore by Darren Simpson

13.06: Guardians of the Wild Unicorns by Linday Littleson

14.06: Magical Boy by Vincent Kao

17.06: All about Eid: Things to Make and Do by Sarah Shaffi and Aaliya Jaleel

20.06: I Kick and I Fly by Ruchira Gupta

21.06: Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah

Author of the Week: Chosen by pupils

03.06: Patrick Ness

10.06: Camryn Garrett

17.06: Krystal Sutherland

Series of the Week: Chosen by pupils

03.06 Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld

10.06: The Extinction Trials by SM Wilson

17.06: Rugby Academy by Tom Palmer

Literary and Cultural Celebration Booklists for June:

Read with Pride: June i Pride month, an internationally recognised celebration of the LGBT+ community. We’ve compiled a list of LGBT+ fiction and nonfiction for all ages.

Empathy Day: Empathy Day (June 6^th) ‘inspires children to learn more about empathy, have transformational experiences through stories, and to put empathy into action’ by shining a ‘light on book’s role in raising an empathy-generated generation’. Check out Empathy Lab’s Primary and Secondary booklists, the majority of titles are available in the school library.

Refugee Week: Refugee Week (June 17^th-23^rd) is ‘the world’s largest arts and cultural festival celebrating the contributions, creativity, and resilience of refuges and people seeking sanctuary. This year’s theme is ‘Our Home’. Our booklists features fiction and nonfiction for Junior and Young Adult readers.

Windrush Day: Windrush Day (June 22^nd) honours the contributions of British Caribbean communities and marks the arrival of passengers of the Empire Windrush to the UK. Our booklist includes fiction and nonfiction for all ages.

South Asian Heritage Month: South Asian Heritage Month (July 17^th-August 17^th) celebrates the heritage of people with roots in South Asian countries. This year’s theme is ‘Free to be me’. Our booklist come a month early to ensure it is promoted within the school term and includes fiction and nonfiction for all ages.

Trending Booklists:

Recent Awards: UK book award winners, shortlists, and longlists

Winners: Branford Boase Award, Excelsior Awards, FCBG Children’s Book Awards, Jhalak Prize, The Kitchies, Orwell Prizes, Sports Book Awards, Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Women’s Prize for Fiction and Nonfiction, YOTO Carnegies.

Shortlists: The Week Junior Book Awards, YA Book Prize

Competitions:

Foyles Young Poets of the Year Award

Book Buzz: Latest book news from major media outlets and websites

June@ Castlemilk Highschool Library

Leave a reply

Pride 2024

Every June, Pride Month celebrates the rights of LGBTQ+ people in societies all around the world. Pride brings awareness to the LGBTQ+ community and the history of people’s fight for equal rights.

We have loads of books that can help you learn more about LGBTQ+ cultural and history. Or why not read a book by an LGBTQ+ author this month? Browse our Pride collect on Padlet and visit the library to collect your next read.

Dungeons & Dragons

On Fridays afternoons, pupils in S1-S3 have the opportunity to take part in lots of different activities as part of the Wider Achievement program. For the summer term, the library hosted a beginners Dungeons & Dragons group. Pupils spent a few sessions building their characters, choosing their skills and inventing backstories. We ended up with elves, druids, halflings, and lots of Dragonborn. Then we were ready to play! Big thank you to our star pupil Payton, who was our D&D oracle and lead everyone through some very exciting trap-filled adventures.

: Danger forrest

: Murderous merfolk

New New New

We also got some great new books, just in tie for the holidays. Here’s a wee sample of top picks in fantasy, sci-fi and the supernatural. All of these are available now from the school library.

St Roch’s Reads: June

Leave a reply

What’s happening in St Roch’s library as we reach the end of another school year

Empathy Day

Taking place in June every year, Empathy Day celebrates and grows empathy’s power to create a better world. It shines a light on books’ role in raising an empathy-educated generation. through stories, and to put empathy into action!

This year we marked empathy day with an Empathy Bookshelf display and Empathy Reads noticeboard. The library volunteers did a wonderful job on their corridor display.

Ms Wood’s S2 class also joined in an Empathy Day activity session. We listened to ‘The piano at the station’ a story by Helen Rutter from the empathy shorts collection. We then spoke in groups about the story, using conversation prompts then helped us think about the experience and emotions of characters. Afterwards we broke out the art supplies and created colourful emotion maps, describing our own feelings from the day or imagining what the characters were feeling in the story. There are lots of great activities and samples in the annual Empathy Day resource pack and on their website including a great selection of short stories from fantastic authors.

Storytelling group

: ‘Annoyed’

: ‘Energetic’

: ‘Jealous’

We also had our final story group of the year! Our groups in S1 and S2 take part in creative activities focused on storytelling which can help pupils to recognize their emotions and express themselves.

For our last sessions pupils picked an emotion off the feelings wheel, imagined that emotion as a character and then wrote a descriptive poem. Afterwards we used modelling clay or lego to build our poem character. This session was based on poetry prompts shared by Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2023 Joseph Coelho.

Library Volunteers

As term finished, we celebrated a year of hard work from our volunteer team with a pizza party and movie screening. Everyone was a great help in the library over the year but a few pupils went above and beyond and earned their first Library Assistant Award. Well done to Raya, Ore, Rose, Ava, Roya and Msgana. And a big thank you to our HT Mr Herron for providing the pizza and snacks, which went down very well! What a great end to the school year.

Creative Writing @Holyrood

Leave a reply

We’ve been busy celebrating in the library this term. In May we welcomed Julie McNeil, poet and football fan supreme. What great timing for the Euros! We learned how emotions and sport are closely linked, shared our own sporting memories and started to turn these into poems. There was inspiring discussion and writing from Mr. Devlin’s S1 class. The S2 Writing mentors joined in working alongside and encouraging everyone. This workshop was part of Glasgow Libraries Wee Write Festival, supported by the Scottish Poetry Library.

Julie’s Workshop

It was brilliant meeting Julie and hearing her feedback afterwards: “What a fantastic group of writers! Really enjoyed their company and hearing all their great ideas”. We now have copies of Julie’s books ‘We are Scottish Football’, and ‘Mission Dyslexia’ in the library, to borrow and enjoy.

Also in May, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our White Water Writers Project, funded by the School Library Improvement Fund. Since writing their own book, the group has gone from strength to strength, mentoring a ‘Writing for Fun’ club for S1 pupils, taking part in Scottish Book Trust 50 Words writing competition, writing poetry, sharing book reviews, and generally having a brilliant time.

It’s always a party when the Writing mentors are around!

S2 Writers Celebration

In June, we had a special visit from Charis, Careers Adviser, who admired the work of our hardworking S1 and S2 lunchtime team, and presented prizes.

Visit from Charis, SDS

We feel very lucky to have so much support for Creative Writing here at Holyrood, both from everyone in the school and from Glasgow Libraries, and also from visitors who help us.

Whether any of our writers go on to do this as a career, or just as a hobby, writing is an incredible talent to have, and we want to hear your voices. So keep writing – You’ve been absolutely fantastic this year!

Euros competition

Have a wonderful holiday.

Bannerman in June

Leave a reply

As the school year is slowly drawing to close and everyone in school seems focused on the EuroCup and the holidays, the English department has been completing the evidence portfolio for Bannerman to achieve its Reading Schools Award. One of the last projects was the focus on a book bingo, which quite a few pupils have completed! Surely they will be excited for their reward.

Happy empathy day!

Leave a reply

On the 6th of June, we celebrated Empathy Day in St Mungo’s school library with great enthusiasm. Pupils worked together to create a remarkable Empathy Display, featuring their colorful artwork and thoughtful messages that highlighted the importance of empathy.

As part of the celebration, pupils made Emotion Maps, which creatively depicted various feelings and experiences. This activity encouraged self-expression and fostered a deeper understanding among peers.

In the library, pupils also hid character bookmarks throughout the shelves, inviting others to discover and share new stories. Each bookmark was a hidden gem, promoting conversations and connections among readers.

Additionally, we introduced an Empathy Bookshelf, filled with books that inspire empathy and kindness. This special collection now serves as a resource for pupils seeking to explore stories that open hearts and minds.

Empathy Day was a successful event that emphasized the power of empathy in building connections and understanding within our school community.