Category Archives: St Roch’s

This Term at St Roch’s – A Wee Read Celebration

As the first term draws to a close, Emma, our library assistant at St Roch’s Secondary has written a post about how they celebrated Wee Read!

A great deal of exciting library activity has taken place in St Roch’s Secondary School Library this term, including the marking of East & South East Asian Heritage Month and Deaf Awareness Month in September, followed by Black History Month in October.

A particular highlight was the celebration of Wee Read, a Scottish Library and Information Council initiative which encouraged people across Scotland to read together on Wednesday, 7 October 2026. In preparation for the event, student library volunteers helped decorate the library, blowing up Wee Read balloons and creating a themed display complete with booklists, bookmarks, stickers and a Wee Read pledge board. All staff were also invited to visit the library and sign up for a staff library card.

Also, for Wee Read, St Roch’s Secondary School Library hosted a lunchtime reading of Katya Balen’s autumnal novel October, October, which was promoted to the whole school through the morning tannoy announcements. To reflect the protagonist October’s love of hot chocolate, students attending the event were treated to a cup of the beverage, which they drank with great enthusiasm. Following the reading, students responded to a series of discussion prompts displayed on the projector, encouraging them to explore the extract’s themes of storytelling, nature and connection. Hearing students passionately discuss their thoughts and interpretations with one another transformed reading into a genuinely shared experience, demonstrating how books can foster conversation, curiosity and a stronger sense of community.

Alongside the lunchtime event, teaching staff across the school shared another short extract from the novel with their classes during the final six minutes before interval. Although the ongoing painting of the school has resulted in significant disruption to library services, it also gave me the pleasure of seeing one teacher read the passage aloud to their class while they were temporarily based in the library. That brief pause for reading felt particularly special, serving as a timely reminder of the respite and interconnection books can provide as the colder, darker months begin to draw in.

September Wrap Up!

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We have now reached the end of our first full month of term, and the libraries have been abuzz with activity!

September was full of brilliant reasons to visit the school library – from Maths Week to to Roald Dahl Day – and our incredible library assistants really took the time to make each event special!

Roald Dahl Day was marked in several schools with some fantastic displays. A fun fact about Roald Dahl: did you know he was an actual chocolate taster for Cadbury when he was 13? As part of a focus group at school, he was given a box of chocolates to test! It was one of the things that inspired him to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

National Coding Week took place in September, from the 14th – 20th. This event promotes the importance of learning digital skills. Did you know? Ada Lovelace wrote the very first computer programme in 1843!

Maths Week Scotland marked its 10th anniversary this year! Getting involved with Maths Week is a great way to promote the library and its resources to subjects which often are not well-connected to their school libraries. The school library at Shawlands Academy really got stuck in this year and helped to facilitate the Maths Passport and raffle activity. Pupils answered maths questions from each school subject, and filled passports were entered into a prize draw!

The fun wasn’t just happening at Shawlands though! Other schools set up displays and took part in their own activities as well.

With all the excitement around the various events in September, you might think your school libraries didn’t have time for anything else! Well, you’d be wrong. Check out some of the other great displays and activities going on across the city.

Welcome to the new Glasgow School Libraries’ GLOW Blog!

We’re a few weeks into the 26/27 academic year, and there are some new faces about! After a service review and redesign, you might notice your school library is open more often now than it has been in the past. That’s because we have thirty brand new, bright-eyed Glasgow Life Assistants staffing your school library, and as a result, many schools have received an increase in service days.

Your Glasgow Life Assistant (GLA for short!) will be on-hand either three or four days each week, so you can visit the library with your classes as well as during your breaks and lunch. They’ll host various clubs, introduce new S1s to the library, and create lots of fun displays to highlight the wonderful selection of books.

They’ve been hard at work already, getting to know the schools and the books. Check out some of the great displays already out there!

: St Roch’s Secondary

: Bannerman High School

: Hyndland Secondary

: Knightswood Secondary

: St Paul’s High School

: Springburn Academy

: Cleveden Secondary

: Lochend Community High

: King’s Park Secondary

: Drumchapel High School

: Eastbank Academy

: Smithycroft Secondary

Cleveden Secondary

The Edinburgh International Book Festival has made several events available to livestream and some schools have been taking part from the comfort of their school library!

Here’s what some folks had to say about the events:

“A fun event that encourages pupils to explore new authors.”
“It was a lovely event. I’d love to run something like this more regularly. An S1 pupil even came back after school to check who had won.”
“… a fun and informative event.”

We’ll be updating this site throughout the year, highlighting all of the exciting things happening in school libraries around Glasgow. Make sure you keep checking back to stay up-to-date!