Category Archives: St Andrew’s Secondary School

April @ St. Andrew’s

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We had loads on this month, including our final author visit as part of the Library Young Team – SLIF project (funded by the Scottish Government). We also have a new club, the rebirth of an old one plus the establishment of a School Library Council.

Graeme Armstrong at St. Andrew’s!

This month we were delighted to welcome Graeme Armstrong, author of the highly acclaimed The Young Team, to the school as our final LYT author.

Hes poke about his book and the ‘story behind the story’ which included some emotional and also inspiring aspects of his life growing up as a gang member and how he found his way out.

 Our S3s were absolutely captivated and our only five copies of his book went just moments after the talk concluded.

Games Club!

Our pupil helpers have established a new board and card games club! This will be on every Wednesday lunchtime and pupils have the chance to play any of our board and card games available in the library. We are hoping to add more

Other news

Thanks to our librarian colleagues who selected some bonus books from Waterstones for our schools. The selection at St. Andrew’s has gone down a storm already and provides the pupils with plenty of new books to keep them going until the summer holidays!

The Manga Club is also back! Due to popular demand, the club will take place in Ms. Glass’ room right across the corridor from us. I will be working with the pupils who organise the club to provide new reading material, games and activities!

On Tuesday (30th), we had our inaugural Library Council meeting. Unfortunately due to being off on study leave, our senior members couldn’t make it but our younger contingency came up with some excellent suggestions. Some exciting changes coming soon!

 

February @ St. Andrew’s

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February was a great month at St. Andrew’s with some exciting news!

New Look

We have had a make-over! Our new shelving has arrived plus the walls received a much-needed lick of paint. We are still waiting on some new furniture arriving – at which point we will have our official grand re-opening! In the meantime, we have at least been able to welcome both classes and our lunchtime crowd back!

 

 

Brian Conaghan

On Tuesday 20th, we also welcomed Brian Conaghan to the school as part of our SLIF project with Renfrew Council. He chatted to our S3s about his life growing up in Coatbridge, his journey in becoming an author and also about his new book, Treacle Town.

 

March is shaping up to be even busier with two author visits, World Book Day, Woman’s History Month AND British Science Week all coming up!

December/January @ St. Andrew’s

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Happy new year from the librarian and library helpers! 

After an excellent Christmas, 2024 looks like it will have a number of excellent things happening in and around the library. Today, we will give you a sneak peak of some of the many new books we have in before giving you some updates as well as our plans for February and beyond.

New Books!

Our new stock is coming in thick and fast! This month we have a number of excellent titles fresh out of the box, including these:

 

 

Refurb

The library refurb is officially underway! Unfortunately this means there will be disruptions to the library service over the next couple of weeks but we promise it’ll be worth it! We’ll be sure to throw a big party once it’s done…

Author Visits!

As of next month we will be welcoming a series of authors to come and talk to our S3s as part of a Scottish Government-funded project called Library Young Team! First up, we will be welcoming Brian Conaghan to the school on Tuesday 20th February.

Christmas @ St. Andrew’s

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We hope everyone is looking forward to some well deserved time off over the Christmas Break! In the meantime, here is our display (complete with possibly the smallest Christmas tree in the school) of some of our Christmas and Winter-themed books to tide you over, all hand-picked by our library helpers:

Thanks to all the staff and pupils at St. Andrew’s who have continued to support the library and we hope to have an even better 2024 complete with a shiny new library!

September @ St. Andrew’s

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We’re back for another school year and have lots of things to update everyone on!

Library move/refurb

After our move to English 4, we have moved again! This time to a much larger space. We are currently awaiting a full refurb of the library but once this is done, we look forward to bringing back our full programme of clubs and events – no less the Manga Club! Watch this space for updates.

S1 Inductions

September was a month for meeting and getting to know our new S1s. It was great having them down for their library inductions and there were a lot of keen readers amongst them.

ProQuest/GALE sessions

We are already underway with our research skills workshops as Advanced Higher Drama got their first ProQuest/GALE/Oxford DNB session of the year. We are hoping to continue this with both Social Subjects and English classes next month.

 

Next Month

October will see us continue with our class borrowing periods for all S1 to S3 pupils and work with S6 paired readers. As the new S1s get their iPads, we are looking to begin Libby/Borrowbox sessions to promote our online resources. October also marks Black History Month (UK) and we will have a pupil-curated display in the library to mark this.

St. Andrew’s Wee Write trip!

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Class 1.2 have been excellent users of the library this year. So to reward them, we thought we’d arrange for them to meet a real life author at the Wee Write festival in the Mitchell Library!

We went to a talk/workshop by writer Alex Malarky and, needless to say, everyone had a great time. We listened to Alex talk a bit about her book, including a short reading, and our young people even got the chance to create their own adventure story!

 

We’ve been a bit quiet recently due to exams going on in the library but please do return for more exciting updates!

February @ St. Andrew’s!

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Hi everyone! Welcome to our first full month of normal service!

This month is LGBT History Month and we have a display of some great books which relate to LGBTQ+ issues or contain LGBTQ+ characters and protagonists. It’s a very eclectic mix and some are more ‘obvious’ than others, but we hope that there is something for everyone. Plus, there is a free rainbow bookmark with every book borrowed!

This month also brings us Languages Week Scotland as well as International Mother Language Day so what better time to set up our new Community Languages Section! We have a number of new books in French, Polish, Italian, Spanish and Arabic (most of which didn’t last long before pupils snapped them up!). We are hoping to have more in the not-so-distant future but we reckon this is a good start! Also special thanks to our EAL group for creating a new multilingual. ‘Welcome’ sign for the library.

3rd March is World Book Day and we have lots of exciting things planned, including a book cover competition, a book swap and much more. Our next update will be a WBD special so keep your eyes pealed!

 

Happy New Year from St. Andrew’s!

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I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year and found time to relax with a good book!

We have largely been closed since we came back from the break to accommodate prelims. However, we can still provide books! Aside from reintroducing the class boxes – a bespoke selection of books for each class – we are also bringing back our click and collect service. Click on this link, fill in the form, and collect your book!

Alternatively, we have QR codes dotted around the school and also on our Twitter page which will also take you to the form. 

There are also vast selections of eBooks and Audiobooks available on Libby and BorrowBox – both of which are available on your iPads. You’ll need your library card number or your PIN, so if you don’t have those then email me at gw19mcgregormark@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk

 

More updates in February where we will be back up and running to full capacity plus the return of the Manga Club, the EAL reading group and other exciting events!

We’re back!

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We are finally getting round to updating this again as we finally have much to talk about again!
Since we started back, the library has been operating a little differently: We are only open during lunchtime, can only allow 15 in at a time for study and 2 in at a time for borrowing/dropping off, you must try and avoid touching books if you do not intend to take it away with you and all returned books must now be quarantined for 72 hours. *breathes*

Now, enough of what you CAN’T do. What CAN you do?

As with lock down, we are still encouraging everyone to make use of the eLibrary apps. Your iPads can come in handy for this as they can be used to download apps such as Borrowbox (books/audiobooks), Libby (books/audiobooks), RB Digital (Magazines) and Freegal (music). Again, just contact me via email if you require your card number and/or PIN – gw19mcgregormark@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk

Our click and collect service is also up and running and we have had a few takers so far but we would like to see more!  Dotted around the school, are some posters which include a QR code. The code will take you to a form and in just four simple questions, you can request your book and collect it the next day (or lunchtime on the same day if before 12pm). I appreciate not everyone has a QR code function on their iPad/device, so you can alternatively follow this link, or just email me your order.   There have been changes to some of our book displays. As we are trying to minimise contact with the books, we have put handy descriptions beside them helping you to get some kind of idea what the books are about. We will be rotating these every once in a while.

We are also hoping to get our class boxes out to you ASAP but we are still waiting on said boxes being delivered!

For September, we are hoping to get the Manga Club back up and running. I am currently in discussions with a few young people about a lunchtime club since an after-school one is no longer possible.

If anyone has any thoughts/requests/problems then feel free to drop me an email. Equally, contrary to popular belief, my door is always open if anyone wants to come and talk in person. I will be here at the usual times Tuesday to Friday.

End of the year post!

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You might have noticed that I have been a bit quiet on the old blog front lately. I have been busy trying to devise the weird and wonderful ways in which I can continue to provide a service to you in times of social distancing.

As we well know, things are not set in stone and everything is subject to change. However, assuming that we are sticking to our current plans, then the library will look slightly different for a little while.

Firstly, we will need to provide you with books remotely. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to browse books in the way you used to. On the plus side, everyone will be able to request any books or authors they want and if you let me know what sort of books you enjoy reading then I can do all the work for you and find something I’ll think you enjoy! These will likely be done on a class to class basis and I can even also bring your requested books down to you. Any individual requests can be made by emailing me directly: gw19mcgregormark@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk

We will also be further promoting our online services to you throughout the year. The good news is that we now have Borrowbox and Freegal on your school iPads and we are hoping to have more by August! You can access any of the eLibrary features here: https://libcat.csglasgow.org/web/arena/home. To access them, all you need is your library card number (the D00… one above the barcode) and your PIN (I can provide that! Just let me know).

Events might also look different but we will work with everyone to make sure that we can still bring you some excellent author events throughout the year, regardless of what restrictions may or may not be in place!

As for clubs, namely the Manga Club, we will need to have a look at where we are in August but it is my sincerest hope that we can get any clubs or groups back up and running as soon as possible. 

Finally, I would like to again take an opportunity to thank all the pupils and staff at St. Andrew’s for making me feel welcome and part of the team in my first school year. It has been a challenging year and next year looks set to come with its own challenges but we will get through it and can look forward to a Library Grand Re-Opening party when everyone is allowed to visit the library again.

Enjoy your summer break everyone. You’ve definitely earned it!