Tag Archives: Manga Club

April @ St. Andrew’s

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!

 

Bannerman Roundup

March is another exciting month for Bannerman! We have quite a few events organised for all, starting this week as Thursday 7th March was 🌟📚World Book Day📚🌟, the annual worldwide celebration of reading for pleasure: the library was open at lunch with snacks and book-related activities available – which the pupils enjoyed as the before & after photo demonstrates! Last week, all pupils also received their £1 World Book Day token with a short presentation on how & where to use it.

world book day display
table of world book day activities world book days activities on table

For a family learning evening later in March, Ms Bortolato and the English Department are working on activities to involve parents into the junior fiction their kids read. Pupils from our Manga Club contributed by writing up a short history of Manga to place on the genre table at the event! 💻💭🗯

pupils at bannerman writing a presentation on manga history

That’s all for the moment! We’ll be back at the end of the Month for another update! 📖

New Arrivals in Our Manga Collection

Just because it will never look this immaculate again – luckily so, as the librarian is looking forward to seeing the expressions of joy and surprise on the faces of our keen manga readers as they borrow all these newly-arrived books! These here are just some of our most requested titles, but there is plenty more to explore in the library: Naruto, One Piece, Komi Can’t Communicate and many many more!

 

Manga club in Bannerman is always in full swing and we keep coming up with new activities and games. Here are some of them:

  • Guess the anime theme song (we play a theme song on Spotify and guess)
  • Who would say that? (we pick a widely popular manga and read out a pivotal speech bubble, the other club members have to guess which character says that line)
  • Colouring pages, always popular and by request
  • Blooket manga quiz that the pupils regularly update
  • Guess who? (we describe a manga character and have to guess who it is)
  • Learning to draw manga-style with our how-to books
  • Making bookmarks inspired by manga
  • Discussing the manga the pupils have been reading, exchanging recommendations
  • Manga Multiverse: we think of mashups of two different manga and what it would be like in terms of plot, characters etc, for example Demon Slayer x Tokyo Ghoul.

Updates from Bannerman

It’s been a pretty arty few months in Bannerman High School. We started a weekly Manga Club where pupils can make new friends through their love of anime and manga – we draw, have colouring sheets, and play “Guess Who?” with manga characters. Manga gets children passionate about reading because the series-format keeps them eager to see what happens next in a story arc; the plot is usually quite complex and intricate which requires a level of attention and memory; the characters are qualitatively rich and the character development is noticeable through the various volumes. This provides young readers with an awareness of literary processes. And, of course, they also start to write their own stories and learn to draw beautifully – which is where our visit from fab illustrator Neil Slorance came in really handy. Neil held a workshop on comics-style drawing that the pupils loved and engaged with even after it was over, coming back at lunch to continue their works and asking for more visits such as this one. Thank you Neil!

 

St. Andrew’s Library Returns!

After a rather uneventful couple of weeks due to the prelims, the library at St. Andrew’s is back up and running in its full glory! It has been a busy week but it was great to see everyone back using the library again.

During the prelims I ran a ‘Mobile Library’ system in which I visited some classes with a selection of books for them to borrow. The system was such a resounding success that one of our Drama teachers, Mrs. Little, asked if we could make it a permanent fixture for the Safe Space she operates from her classroom Wednesdays after school. This gives pupils who are struggling with social anxiety issues a chance to benefit from the services that the school library provides in a more ambient and relaxed environment.

  Wednesday also saw the return of our Manga Club which we are hoping to branch out from being primarily a drawing class, to include games, videos and discussion. I have also been giving the club first dibs on new arrivals!

In other news, on Thursday we had renowned author Kwame Alexander visit the school. This was organised by our Literacy department but it was a pleasure to be there and Kwame’s talk for the S2 pupils was excellent. I was sure to stock up on plenty of extra copies of some of Kwame’s books in preparation. I’m glad I did too as his books have been flying off the shelves since!

There are many more exciting things to come over the next couple of months so watch this space!