Category Archives: Knightswood Secondary School

February events

Hello Readers,

Here we are at the end of another busy month… February has marked many events and celebrations, and so many ideas have been going on. So here is a wee summary of what our busy Library Assistants have done to celebrate the following events.

LGBTQI+ History Month

Our permanent book display has seen some new titles added and a wonderful new poster made by one of our new library team members. We have also helped our LGBTQI+ school group distributing LGBTQI+ friendly door display for teachers! Our librarian has also been rewarded with a beautiful mug and these kind words:

” Ms Spaltro, our librarian. Thank you for all that you do for our LGBT+ pupils. We have a greatly stocked library of LGBT+ reading materials, thanks to you. And thanks for being so supportive of the community. Nominated by many pupils. “

Harry Potter Night Event

Harry Potter event decorations: a witch hat and a poster saying "Hogawarts" made by the pupils.

Molly and Abigail, two wonderful senior pupils, have worked tirelessly to organise and deliver a fantastic Harry Potter event on the 3rd of February. They did such a good job including everyone that even the most reluctant participants enjoyed our event. A special mention goes to one of our EAL pupil, who was initially afraid it could have been to hard, but he ended up been in the winning team! Attached a wee picture of the decorations that our pupils have used to make our library magical! We are also very grateful to the Drama department that has let us use some of their costumes to make the scene more suggestive.

Languages Week Scotland

Multilingual book display for the Languages Week Scotland.

Our multilingual assistants have made a beautiful display to mark this celebration. Full of multilingual books and smart quotes to highlight the importance of learning languages. They have also involved our library regulars into creating multilingual welcoming posters that have been displayed at the entrance of the library.

Unfortunately, the lights aren’t great, so you will need to visit us to admire them!

Welcome to the library posters in different languages

These are only few of the many tasks that we have completed in the library, but many more are to come!

Please stay tuned to see what we are planning…

Library Newsletter – Year 2, Number 1.

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Hello, readers!

Please find attached the link to our latest issue of the Library Newsletter. https://www.flipsnack.com/5B5DF899E8C/newsletter-october-2021.html

A very special one, as entirely curated by two of our wonderful library assistants.

Happy reading!

Library events: Hobbit Day Celebration

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Hello!

This year our great Library Team will host a bookish event every month.

The first planned was Hobbit Day Celebration on Wednesday, 22nd September.

Each library assistants has helped to make it a great success:

Muhammed, Abdul, Samarin, and Rio have wonderfully pulled together a book display, to decorate the library, but also to suggest their favourite fantasy books.
Eilidh, Abigail and Nathan have planned the activities.
Maria has drawn a brilliant event poster to spread across the school.

On the event day,in small teams we have solved Gollum’s riddles, looking for clues around the library, and completing a related crossword. We were very busy, but it was lovely to see so many young people adventuring in a new book genre, socializing and having fun.

Here are our event winners!

Do not worry, though, as we are already working on the next event!

Celebrating our different cultures

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Hello readers,

April has marked the beginning of our EAL Reading project, supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund. We are one of the many Glasgow school libraries taking part, guided by the wonderful Ms DeLeavey – librarian at St Margaret Mary Secondary School and Shawlands Academy – who has tirelessly been working on it.

As school librarians we have also taken part diverse and very informative training by different stakeholders, such as the Glasgow City Council EAL Unit and the Scottish Refugee Library. This solid basis, and the support of Mr Gibson – Knightswood Secondary School EAL teacher – has given Ms Spaltro the right incentive to start the reading club with a group of S2 pupils. But also a multicultural club, ‘Culture Vulture’, co-lead with Miss Di Rollo, German and Spanish teacher.

Since April, the group has largely grown and while we have been all been improving our English – included the librarian – we have also learnt a lot about each other’s cultures; while reading ‘Eagle Warrior’ by Gill Lewis. A great reading for those who seek to know more about Scottish culture and countryside.

Our weekly schedule looks like this: reading group on Wednesdays, and Culture Vulture on Thursdays at lunch, open to everyone. The topics of the club meetings have been: favourite place in Glasgow, different idioms compared, and Fashion in different countries.

Thus far, the pupils’ commitment has been outstanding, but this was only a small part of the whole project. Stay tuned to know what’s boiling in the pot – as we say in Italy!

Create a story with Dekkocomics

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Hello readers,

Last January, our school was successful in receiving a great economical support from the First Minister’s Reading Challenge – Creative Workshop Fund. Yey!

This has made our wish – to boost our pupils’ creative writing confidence – true! As in the best stories, there have been some issues; once on top of everything a massive national lockdown!

No worries though, our team was extremely committed to offer the best to our learners… Several phone calls and Teams meeting after, we were able to arrange four (yes, F-O-U-R!) sessions with Rossie Stone from Dekkocomics!

Yesterday we had our second session and we have seen our pupils’ engagement grew massively! Rossie has inspired us to always do our best, and that an easy way to do it is to find the enjoyable side of what we are doing. Our pupils felt confident enough to write and draw their own beautiful stories! To give you and idea, these are some of the stories we have had: a football team playing in the Ibrox stadium, a young person learning the importance of rules, and a young dancer following her dream.

What’s next?

We still have two more sessions to go, and we really hope that at least one of them will be in person. And then… Our wonderful pupils’ stories will be pulled together and printed in a book for them to take home!

So far, we couldn’t be any prouder of our young people for the resilience they shown undertaking a series of online webinars. We also want to express our deep gratitude to all the school staff who has been involved and to the Fist Minister’s Reading Challenge for giving us this opportunity.

Hopefully, we will be able to share more about this project later on!

How to use Libby – a short video

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Dear readers,

This is a short video on how to use one of the Glasgow Libraries apps: Libby.

If you need any help with it your (school) librarian will be able to help you! Special thanks to Ms Sferrazzo and Mr Wason for their help and suggestions!

Happy Reading!

Italian Read Trip

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Hello Readers!

“Habemus Italian Read Trip”! Yes, it’s finally finished!

It has taken weeks and I’ve involved Italian librarians, Scottish school librarians, Scottish English teachers and Mr Foschetti, who has made the wonderful map.. As you will read, this project was inspired by two of our amazing librarians, who have also supported me: THANK YOU!

One of the reasons why I’ve pulled this together is because many (if not most!) of our library assistants and school teachers have asked me more information about Italy, and were planning to visit it this summer. I thought to substitute the restaurants tips with books suggestions, I hope you will find the right match for you!

I have also thought of the Italy experts and added some questions for you to see how much you know.

Here is the flipbook: http://www.flipbookpdf.net/web/site/f748b808425ee11b127eedaf1f13f0e17eb67e8a202006.pdf.html#page/1

Enjoy your itinerant reading!

Pride month

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Happy Pride month to everyone!

To celebrate, this month’s post will be about how the school LGBT+ club and the library have worked together to create a more inclusive space.

The first step was looking at a very inclusive library (and one of Ms Spaltro’s favourite): the Glasgow Women Library. In October Ms McMillan, the librarian and the LGBT+ club visited the GWL guided by the archivist, Nicola Maksymuik and one of the volunteers, May. We saw unique material and art works; but also discussed equality and respect. Very actual, isn’t it? A new hobby was also discovered: badge making! So loved by everyone that Ms McMillan bought a badge maker for our school as well.

This event – and a Glasgow school librarians training – has encouraged us to fill our library with rainbow flags labels. After a library assistants meeting, it was decided to stick a rainbow flag on the spine of every LGBT+ friendly book in the library, to help every reader to find books with LGBT+ themes. It took months to be ready, but the success was immediate. A handful of pupils from the LGBT+ club became our book reviewers: they have been in charge of reading the new books and identifying if they were LGBT+ friendly and suggesting them to the other pupils. Some titles? Giant Days by John Allison, Heartstopper by Alice Oseman and The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta.

February is the LGBT+ history month and has meant for our assistant lots of debates while they have prepared an amazing book display with a rainbow flag donated by the drama department. Not to forget the brilliant badges and informative material that the Creative Industries class has produced and distributed across the school.

The cherry on the top of the cake has been the brilliant event with Dean Atta thanks to the Wee Write! festival. Meanwhile the library team was working on a more inclusive space; Mr Beaton’s S2 class took part in Words that burn project (check the previous post) and Dean Atta was one of the authors involved. The librarian was so impressed that when the opportunity came up, Ms Spaltro wanted the pupils to meet him. Our LGBT+ readers made sure that every pupil who was going to take part in the event had read the Black Flamingo and prior to the event we chatted about the book for weeks. After having listened to the author’s presentation, we discussed coming out, families, integration and Drag Queens. It has been absolutely stunning to see the pupils so engaged and informed. So proud of them and thanks a lot to the Wee Write! Festival team and of course Dean Atta for inspiring us all.

What’s next?

Keep having these bookish conversations that encourage events and activities, keep hosting inspiring authors and support every library user to feel confident and welcome in the library. Last but not least, we are working hard to achieve a bronze LGBT+ chart for our school!

For the events pictures, please check our twitter account: @KsSchoolLibrary

Words that burn project

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Hello readers,

I thought of refreshing us in this difficult time with some happy memories from the brilliant ‘words that burn’ project we took part in.

First things first, Words that burn is a national project to explore and express human rights through poetry. Amazing, isn’t it?

The first meeting was held by the poet Ash Dickinson showed us that we can all create poems and put us in a creative mood. Amnesty International representatives launched the project and after an introduction to human rights they divided us in small groups to work on our poems about some of them.

Some of us didn’t even know what a poetry slam was, until we attended one in the Mitchell library theatre. We were incredibly lucky to see the talented Dean Atta, Anita Govan and Jenny Lindsay performing. They were very inspiring, and we have talked about their poems for weeks.

After the encouraging workshop held by Anita Govan, our pupils were ready to take part in the Hillhead Library Local Poetry Slam Competition.

Every group showed great talent and bright minds, and we were very proud when one of our groups won with a sharp poem about climate change.

The last step would have been a final poetry slam in the Mitchell Library, where pupils from all the twelve participating schools would have the chance to see performing few selected pupils and grab a copy of their poems anthology. Unfortunately, we had to postpone this event; but this doesn’t prevent us from sharing our happy memories.

This project wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Amnesty International, SLIC, Glasgow Life and the poets who have collaborated with us.

Also a huge thank you goes to Knightswood Secondary School, in particular Mr Beaton and his S2 class.

For those who want to know more about the UDHR there is a very good online course about it on Futurelearn at this link:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights

For now, this is all.

We hope to be able to share with you our poems and physical celebration soon!