We’ve hosted several fun activities throughout this school year, making it one of the most exciting years yet! For this blog post, we’re highlighting some of the key events that took place, illustrating the value of School Libraries are to supporting the curriculum, providing a welcoming space that everyone can enjoy, and promoting a lifelong love of reading for pleasure.

Library Highlights:

White Water Writers Novel Writing Workshop: We received funding from the Scottish Library and Information council’s School Library Improvement Fund to deliver a novel writing workshop with the White Water Writers, a project from Glasgow University who work with pupils on creating and publishing their very own novel. For one week, S2/3 pupils who volunteered for the project attended the workshop and worked collaboratively to produce their book.

Participatory Selection Sessions: Hosting Participatory Selection Sessions ensure our school library stock remains relevant and useful to our readers. Participatory Budgeting enable the library to represent the reading needs and interests of the school community. This term, we’ve focused on books for struggling and reluctant readers. Non-fiction is a big hit with some of our S1/2 participants, reflecting a recent study conducted by the National Literacy Trust as part of National Non-Fiction November. Key findings of the report are on the National Literacy Trust’s website).

Pathways to the Profession: Our first Pathways to the Profession talk was a success! We invited a Community Librarian from Glasgow Libraries, a Membership Officer from the Chartered Institute of Library and  Information Professionals Scotland (CILIPS), and a Library Assistant from Glasgow Caledonian University Library to chat with members of Pupil Library Committee and other pupils interested in a LIS career. The speakers chatted about their backgrounds and experiences, what their current roles involve, and answered several questions from the audience.

Support for Learning Book Group read Edward Ross’ excellent Gamish: A Graphic History of Gaming, and I Am Malala by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai.

Schools of Literature: This year, the School Library is involved with the Schools of programme with a special class on Literature. Our group read a themed book per month and tie it into crafts and other literacy-based activities. The group was also involved in Glasgow School Libraries’ inaugural YA-ldi Book Awards, a multi-school book award for pupils, by pupils. Our shortlisted authors were Maisie Chan for her book Keep Dancing Lizzie Chu, Ann Lei Sin for her book Rebel Skies and Victoria Williamson for her book War of the Winds. Congratulations to Victoria Williamson whose book was voted the winner across Glasgow Secondary Schools.

eResource Workshops: The School Libraries’ eResource 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. This year we delivered sessions to Advanced Higher English and Advanced Higher History.

Pupil Library Collective: With the overwhelming success of the Pupil Library Committee last year, we’ve expanded our program to continue our journey towards embedding a pupil voice into the School Library. Pupils helped select stock, create and deliver events and quizzes, curate displays and booklists, led competitions and helped with general light duties in the Library.

Author Visits:

March: Creative Writing Workshop with Victoria Williamson: Author Victoria Williamson hosted a workshop with Shawlands Academy Creative Writing group during a Friday lunchtime session. Victoria chatted about the foundations of storytelling and offered some excellent tips and fun activities.

February: Author Visit with Carrie Marshall: We were so fortunate to have musician, author and BBC tech journalist Carrie Marshall visit us to discuss her new book and what it is like to become an author.

November: Ash Dickinson is an award-winning slam poet delivered a lunchtime visit where he discussed 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.

Pupil curated displays: Members of our Pupil Library Committee showed passion and dedication to ensuring vibrant, exciting displays were refreshed each month, highlighting several important events on our cultural/literary calendar such as:

May/June: Southeast Asian Heritage Month, Refugee Week, Empathy Day, Pride, YA Literature Month

March/April: International Women’s Day/Women’s History Month, Neurodiversoty Celebration Week, Anti-racism Day, Ramadan Reads, Trans Day of Visibility

January/February: LGBT+ History Month, World Book Day, Holocaust Memorial Day

December: Winter themed and festivities, Christmas, Yule, Hannukah, Human Rights Month

November: Nonfiction November, Book Week Scotland

October: Black History Month, Navarati, Spooky Stories, World Space Week, World Mental Health Day, Animal Week

September: Maths Week Scotland, East and Southeast Asian heritage Month

Swatch Magazine: Swatch, the Glasgow School Libraries eMagazine continues to grow in popular and readership now with more pupil involvement than ever! Each month features an interview with an author, a craft, recipe, quiz, booklists galore, and highlights of upcoming releases and key award winners. Interactive PDF versions are circulated within our schools Teams. Noninteractive flip-book versions can be viewed below:

Summer 23, Spring 23, Winter 22, Autumn 22, Summer 22, Spring 22, Winter 21, Autumn 21, Summer 21, Spring 21, Winter 20, Autumn 20  

Events /Activities: We held loads of activities throughout the year with the help of our Pupil Library Committee:

Quizzes: This year, our senior quiz leaders created and hosted regular seasonal quizzes to tie in with our cultural/literary calendar. The quizzes have become very popular with our pupils and is an activity that we will continue in the next school year.

March/April: Nowruz: Another member of our Pupil Library Committee created and hosted Shawlands Academy’s first Nowruz, which is Persian New Year. Pupils learned about Nowruz, Persian traditions, and participated in a goldfish hunt around the library. We also ‘jumped over the fire’ to bring in the new year. Literary Egg Hunt: For Easter, we invited pupils to search for the ‘golden eggs’ hidden in amongst the books. Pupils were tasked to find the eggs based on literary clues to get their prize. Eid Crafternoon: Lastly, another member of Pupil Library Committee hosted and delivered a paper lantern activity as part of Eid celebrations.

January/February: LGBT+ History Month – Heartstopper Party: We threw a huge Heartstopper soiree to coincide with LGBT+ History Month and Valentine’s/Palentine’s days. Pupils enjoyed a Heartstopper themed quiz created and delivered by one of our amazing Pupil Library Committee members. Every attendee got a chance to win three prizes: A package of skittles, a Heartstopper bookmark, and a Heartstopper colouring book

November:  There was a 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. 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.

October: Pupils participated in our Black Out Poetry crafternoon event to celebrate National Poetry Day. 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 poetry was then displayed in the Library.

Trending 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 – Summer:

June 5^th – 6^th: Ullapool Book Festival (Ross-shire, Highlands, Scotland)

July 1^st – 13^th: Govanhill International Festival and Carnival (Glasgow, Scotland)

July 8^th – 9^th: Glasgow Zine Fest (Glasgow, Scotland)

July 27^th – 30^th: Big Lit: The Stewarty Book Festival (Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland)

Aug 4^th – 6^th: Bute Noir Crime Writing Festival (Isle of Bute, Scotland)

Aug 12^th – 28^th: Edinburgh International Book Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Awards:

British Book Awards

CLiPPA Poetry Award

International Booker Prize

Jhalak Prize

Yoto Carnegies

Young Adult Book Prize

Waterstones Book Prize

Book Buzz:

BBC

Book Riot

Buzzfeed

Epic Reads

The Guardian

Huffpost

The New York Times