Tag Archives: Storytelling

Special guests at Holyrood

We love having visitors to the School Library. In December, we welcomed poet Tawona Sithole who led a creative writing workshop for S1/S2, involving music, games, drama- with some amazing acting skills on show, and writing our own stories.

Our young writers were very inspired, and supported each other by listening attentively as each group read their story out to the audience. Everyone had a great time, and we hope to see Tawona for another visit sometime soon.

This event was supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

We continue to enjoy our Writing for Fun lunchtime club. Our new theme for January is poetry and we hope to write some poems about ‘things that make us happy’.

This week, Fiona Haddow from the Mitchell Library visited us to lead a Focus Group. We looked through a selection of books she had brought, and chatted about which authors we would most like to meet. Our young people felt very honoured to have this chance, as Fiona will use these opinions to help shape the programme for the ‘Wee Write’ Book Festival. This is a brilliant celebration of reading, where Glasgow Libraries brings authors directly into schools, and also holds events, including Family days, at the Mitchell Library.

Well done to our S2/S3 Focus Group. We really enjoyed speaking to Fiona, hearing about Wee Write, and everyone loved their thank you gifts of books.

The #Rood Reads Library Update

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For end of term, our Reading Schools Committee held a celebration event, and chose their highlights of the year:

Fatima, S3 loved the visit from Nadine Aisha Jassatt. Nadine read a poem from ‘Let Me Tell You This’ and told us about her brand-new book ‘The Stories Grandma Forgot’. We shared lots of different words in different World languages, and thought about how to use these in our own poems.

Mehreen, S3 has enjoyed writing about books and sharing book recommendations. Here’s our display to celebrate Eid.

Sam likes chilling out in the Library (me too!). The group has lots of fun together, like the Book Oscars at Easter time, and choosing a book from the rewards vending machine.

Everyone agreed that Zine Club, run by Ailbhe from Glasgow Zine Library was brilliant. “We loved the zine making”.

S1 enjoyed meeting Maisie Chan, and learning about the importance of diversity in books. This was part of the YA-ldi Glasgow Schools’ Book Awards.

the Duke of Edinburgh library volunteers did excellent work keeping the book displays up to date, and helping to run the library at lunchtimes.

International Women’s Day

12 of our young people wrote a novel together as part of the White Water Writers’ Project. An amazing achievement. We celebrated in style with a Book Launch party for parents, friends and teachers.

What a year! So much fun. Have a wonderful holiday, and join us for more reading adventures in August.

Storytelling for Mental Health project/Book Week Scotland 2022

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November was a very busy month in the library. Not only did we have Book Week Scotland, but we also had a trip to the Mitchell library and our Storytelling Group have also been busy!

Book Week Scotland/Metaphrog trip

Our theme for Book Week Scotland was ‘Scotland’s Stories’ so we decided the best thing to celebrate Scottish stories was to set up a literary map of Scotland! From the Borders to Shetland, the Western Isles to Edinburgh, we displayed a wide range of stories set in Scotland.

We also took the opportunity to take some of our S1s to the Mitchell for a talk and exhibition by Glasgow-based comic artists Metaphrog. Everyone had a great morning and hopefully some budding comic book artists took some inspiration!

Storytelling Group

We also continued our weekly storytelling group this month. Over the last few weeks we had been working with Lego and some other crafty materials to create our own characters. Once we had done this, we then gave them a back story, including a habitat, likes/dislikes and even thought about any quests or antics they would get up to. There were some excellent creations with one of out pupils even drawing out a whole map of their characters’ world!

November updates!

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Welcome back to the Gaelic School blog!

We have had a lot on recently, with more to come in the coming months. Check back here for news on author visits, Book week Scotland and other library-related news.

Storytelling for Mental Health

We are finally underway with our Storytelling group! Over the course of the school year, our group will be engaging in various storytelling-related activities including games, crafts, reading and much much more. Aside from mental health, a key theme of the group is ‘diversity’. We will be giving updates on what the group have been up to here, so don’t miss it!

For our first session, we got everyone to pair off, tell each other an amusing or interesting story about themselves and the other had to re-tell it but be…economical with the truth. It was a lot of fun and we had some excellent stories. As with every session, we get the pupils to describe how they are feeling in one word at the start and end by scanning a QR code (pictured) and entering it into a linked form.

Book Tok display

Introducing our new permanent display: Book Tok! Come down and find some of the top trending books and authors.

Summer in Lourdes Secondary Library

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Well done to all pupils and staff for making it through the year, and through the last difficult few months! You all deserve a great summer holiday! To all the pupils leaving this year, I’m so sorry not to have seen you to say goodbye properly, but I wish you all the best for the future – I’m sure you’ll all do great things and have wonderful lives. The important thing to do is to relax and enjoy this next stage of your life.

Because lockdown is continuing in some form, although it’s being gradually reduced, the library will remain open to you in its current virtual form over the holidays. Opening hours are 9am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday. This may change sometimes, if I’m taking a few days off or have school librarians meetings, but I will post it on your Teams and on the library’s social media if the library will be closed for a day or more.

You can contact Miss O’Neill by email at gw16oneilkathleenmar@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk, on your Teams, and through the library social media. The Twitter handle is @liblourdes and the Instagram handle is @lourdeslibrary. You can also follow the library mascot, Boba Felephant, on Instagram at @bobafelephant.

School Clubs

The Role-Playing Games Club will continue throughout the summer, with a new group for the new S1 pupils starting. There will also be a Summer Reading Challenge-themed programme running for the new S1 pupils, starting on Monday 29 June. S1s, and their younger family members, can register to take part in the official Summer Reading Challenge activities as well; the theme this year is the Silly Squad, so we can look forward to a daft summer!

If there is enough interest from pupils, I’m thinking about setting up a Storytelling Club to run once a fortnight over the summer, and to continue it once school opens again in August. It won’t only be creative writing, but also comics, films, coding, and other media that you would like to use. Please get in touch by email if you would like to be part of it.

The Online Library

You can access a range of resources free via Glasgow Libraries: https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/libraries/online-library. All you need is your library card number and PIN – if you don’t know these, please contact me. Note: new S1 pupils, your cards are not yet ready, but I will let you know once you are all registered. If you have a Glasgow community libraries card, you can use that.

eBooks: use Overdrive and Borrowbox.
Audiobooks: use Overdrive, Borrowbox, and RB Digital
eMagazines: use RB Digital
eMusic: use Freegal

There is a great range of resources to help you with study, research into your hobbies, business ideas, family history, and more. If you’re learning to drive, you can practice for the theory test. These are available here: https://libcat.csglasgow.org/web/arena/eresources. You can also access user guides to the various resources on this page, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions about any of these resources.

I look forward to seeing you all in school in August. I don’t know yet what form the library will take. If we still need to socially distance, you will be able to request library books which will be delivered to you, and there will be books available in your English classroom. I will also be giving you book recommendations. I’ll keep you updated here on the blog, with the links to any blog posts being added to your Teams, and all information shared on library social media.

FInally – again – I, along with Boba Felephant, Albert von Einskull, and library kitten Mad Madame Mim, hope that you enjoy your holidays! Surely nobody can have as bad a holiday as Sweeney Todd being taken to the beach by Mrs Lovett (tee hee).