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International School Library Month, October 2011
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Features
School libraries make a difference! The impact of school libraries on student achievement
IASL's Picture Gallery of School Libraries. Submissions are welcome!
Getting Started: Ideas and Procedures for starting a School Library Association or Section
International School Library Month 2009
School Libraries: The Big Picture
The theme for 2009 has been translated into several languages -- Download the PDF file for further information.
What people are doing for ISLM 2009
Australia | Canada | Croatia | India | Indonesia | Ireland | Pakistan | Poland | Portugal | Romania | Russia | Saudia Arabia | Slovak Republic | South Africa | Turkey | Ukraine | USA |
From Lubna Faqih and Kathy Herrington, PYP Librarian & Media Specialist MYP E-Librarian, MYP Community & Service Leader, Jeddah Knowledge School (IB School), Jeddah
A delightful International School Library Month at the JKS!
What an absolute pleasure it was to hear that the celebrations for the Library Day were extended to the Library Month, as that gave us much more precious time needed to put into action all that the two librarians at JKS planned on doing in the school. Though I have been propelled into the librarian positon after 20 years of teaching English, I must admit that I have built up an absolute passion for it. Although we started school late this semester, my colleague, the MYP Librarian, Ms. Kathy and I put on our thinking caps and whipped up several activities for the PYP and the MYP students. To initiate the plan, a letter was sent to parents announcing October as the ISLM and outlining the linked activities. Using IT technology, motivating posters were created to inform the school community. The ISML logo which was used to produce wonderfully creative posters and bookmarks with the help of
the students was emailed to all the teachers . Running parallel to this, MYP students signed up to wear book character costumes & were busy visiting the PYP classrooms to read to their younger counterparts. The Book Donation drive brought in a generous response, especially from the PYP students.
The PTA has proved to be a big asset to the School. All six members met with me to commit themselves to a sit down time for the Reading Times Activity. Six corners were set up in the two Nursery play areas where students, accompanied by their teachers, sat in rapt attention, listening to a variety of stories from around the world, read by the PTA members. The most exhilarating part of the month was on October 27 & 28 when all students came dressed as their favorite story book characters - Pippy Long Stocking, Snow White, Barbie, Cinderella, Snow White, Captain Hook, Spiderman, Superman, Mr. Brown, Dr. Seuss (my favorite), Alice in Wonderland... the list was endless! This was one occasion when even the quietest could not but talk about her character. Teachers, too, showed their enthusiam - Captain Cook, Dr. Seuss, Bozo, the clown and Brown Bear took their places. ISLM has proved to be tremendously beneficial to all in awakening the need to read and enjoy books!
From Dana Juríková, librarian, Bilingual Gymnasium of C. S. Lewis in Bratislava.
Our library is closely connected to Church Elementary School Narnia that is situated in the same building. Both schools form the Association of C. S. Lewis Schools and they are united in their mission. The web sites of the schools offer information about International Day of School Libraries.
On 26 October at 9.00 am the students of Narnia together with their teachers will create a Big Picture - a Picture of the Most Interesting Story. That is the topic that was announced for this year by IASL. If you want to observe this event, or become direct participants and thus become a part of the Big Picture, you are wholeheartedly welcome.
From Danka Jurik,
Competition about the most interesting event organised in the school library
26th October the students of Narnia together with their teachers created a Big Picture – Picture of the Most Interesting Story.
That was the title of the competition announced by the International Association of School Librarianship. The competition was supported by Slovak Pedagogical Library and it took place under the patronage of Ministry of Education of Slovak Republic.
The event started as a varnishing day named Rhythms of Life that showed artwork of Narnia Elementary School children. It continued with an audiovisual presentation that comprised of painting, musical and literary elements. There were illustrations of children projected on the wall complemented with sounds and tones created by the students of 1st and 2nd grade. In the following part we could see a drama created by 6th grade where they first wrote the most interesting story, then the best story was chosen and together they created a script. The drama was dedicated to their younger schoolmates. The last part – Commentaries – consisted of a choice of stories experienced at school – in the classroom, in the corridors, in the library. The children were transforming an illustrated fairy-tale book into an animated fairy-tale – with emphasis on connecting the story with the illustrations from the book. The role of the parent, teacher, and librarian in the process was obviously very important. There was also a discussion in the library with the topic: Why do we need libraries? It was the question of one of our 3rd graders. We talked about book serving as the source of information (eg. encyclopedia, dictionary, fairy-tale) and about processing and connecting information of all kinds in the mind of a child – bringing in ever new level of motivation for new searching which again implies the role of parents, teachers and librarians.
From Anneli Silvennoinen, Head of Resource Centre, St Mary's School, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Springtime warm ISLM wishes from St Mary's Senior School for Girls, Waverley, Johannesburg, South Africa. A cheery hello from our Library Monitors who had a casual lunch in honour of ISLM. We are also celebrating our Heritage and National Marine Week. The ISLM October Library Lottery entices non readers into the Library as girls who take out books have their name entered into the draw. Two winners will win double movie vouchers on 30 October. We are having fun and hope the world's school libraries are enjoying the month as well.
School Library Monitors luncheon
Celebrating Heritage and National Marine Week
From Busi Dlamini, Johannesburg.
To celebrate the ISLM, the district office in the province of Gauteng in South Africa has organized a handover of books which they received from Texas, USA. The celebration of the donated books will take place on 23 October 2009 at Olympia Park Special School in Springs. The handover of these books will be done by the District Director and Principals. Teacher librarians have been invited to accept the donation. The province has received bookmarks from 30 schools and the school library coordinator, Anna Brown, is busy matching the local schools with international schools.
From Fisun Cetin, Head of School, Neslihan Kilic and Hilal Dundar, Teacher Librarians, Dogus Primary School, Acibadem, Istanbul
Our library supports and promotes information literacy through its services and programs. We always remind our students of the importance of school libraries and having good reading habits. From grade 2 to grade 12 we teach our students how to use library resources effectively, how to access true information, how to use the Internet as a source of true information and how to write a bibliography. Our library contains a wide range of resources such as the latest publications, periodical publications, multimedia resources and online databases. Our teachers encourage the students to use the library resources in each school project and for term homework.
We celebrated International School Library Month in October and the students had great fun. At the beginning of the month, librarian teachers held a seminar about the importance of using the school library. Students were reminded about resource methods and the basic rules of the libraries.
Our theme was “Reading is a beautiful thing”
There were story time activities for years 2–8 in English and Turkish lessons. The students were given a bibliography. From this list of books, they chose a book from the library that they liked and they produced some very nice workstation projects about their books. For example, some students made newspapers, bookmarks and book covers. Grade 5 students started to read ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ in their English lesson. After they have finished reading the book, they will watch the movie, ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’. They are looking forward to watching it.
Also, we organized a book donation campaign. Every student brought books to school that they don’t use anymore. The librarian teachers collected the books and classified them. The books have already been sent to the schools in need.
From Tanya Haist, Head of school librarian.
We started celebrating ISLM in 2006. This year we had a lot of activities during the month of October. Also, this year is significant from our librarian world here in Ukraine in that the second regional Association of School Librarians was created. Now we have two in Ukraine, and we hope to add more in the future.
I would like to share with you the experience of the newly born association’s activities from the town of Mykolayv for the celebration of ISLM 2009, and please post this on your web site.
The name of the head of the Mykolayv Association of School Librarians is Tatiana Roskina. She sent me this information, and she really hopes to get a special greeting from the IASL to inspire the school librarians of Ukraine in their first steps. They will hold a final event on November 11th.
Thank you, best wishes and congratulations. You folks do a great job in uniting every school librarian around the world.
From Tatiana Roskina, The Head of The Mykolayv Association of School Librarians
The Mykolayv Association of School Librarians took a very active part in the celebration of ISLM. This Association organized the festival "School. Library. Reader." with numerous interesting events and meetings in the town of Mykolayv.
- The monitoring survey “Analysis and development of the student reader’s interests”
- Sociological research “The modern reader and reading tendencies”
- Round table discussion “The School Library is the Guarantor of Information and Spiritual Safety of Children and Teenagers”
- The school library readers’ competition “The Summer’s Bestseller”
- The competition of the school librarians “A School Librarian is a Person with Many Sides”
The Gala - Concert for the participants of the festival will take place on November 11th 2009.
During the festival meetings the school library problems were identified and discussed. Some of these concerns are:
- The lack of textbooks, children literature, reference books, classical works by Ukrainian and foreign authors in Ukrainian, and also books on regional studies.
- The lack of financial support for acquiring new material for the students
- The lack of modern computers for the school libraries.
These problems were discussed, and a petition was taking to the Mayor with the hope that he would consider financially supporting school libraries.
Ukrainian school librarians would like to extend their warmest greetings to all other librarians around the world.
From Debbie Williams, Media Specialist, Smiths Station Intermediate School
SSIS is participating once again in International School Library Month. We have been partnered with schools in Canada and Hong Kong. All of our students are busy learning about these countries and creating bookmarks. The bookmarks will be exchanged with the students in our partner schools. Each student’s bookmark contains a picture of interest, his or her favorite book along with the author of the book. We have such a massive number of bookmarks to complete this year that not only have our students been making them, but we have called on the art classes at our high school, and several area church youth groups.
Fourth and fifth grade classes will be researching our partner’s schools, customs, and cultures, and making posters to be displayed outside their classrooms. We have already mailed packages containing a map of Alabama, tourist information brochures, an Alabama poster, and a copy of the book Y is for Yellowhammer, an ABC book of our state.
One of the attached pictures show a group of students searching for Hong Kong on the globe. The other picture shows a group of girls getting the posters ready for display.
Last updated 31 October 2009 (KSB)