Read around the World

With view to the fact that our school is celebrating uniting nations week in October, this year we're trying to add a literary bent to the proceedings.

There are a number of steps to this, which are easy or complicated, depending on how "ready" your collection is.

A little while back, I created resource lists on Destiny, and a visual search button for "read around the world". Since I didn't have a lot of time I grouped them by continent, with a separate section for Singapore which is where we live.  It involved doing subject searches on our catalog for various countries on each continent and then grouping them together.  Actually this wasn't that easy. A book like "Inside out and Back again" - takes place in USA, about a Vietnamese immigrant - where do you put it and its ilk (of which we have many). What if an american author is writing about Africa? Generally I tended to put the books according to where they took place rather than the origin of the author. But I've allowed my students to decide how they want to categorise it when they add a comment to their shelfie (more later).

Before the summer break, I also ordered all the books suitable for primary school on the USBBY list for 2016 so they were ready for the school year. Again I didn't have anything specific in mind, except to diversify my collection.  As an aside - I must say I'm incredibly impressed with the selection in this list and I'm going to order from it again this year, and from the backlists of prior years. Books like "My Two Blankets" are just phenomenal and just so appropriate for a multi-lingual environment.

This term, I joined the UN committee and put my idea forward to do a "read around the world" as part of the activities so it would not just be a "costume, food and flags" affair. I also convinced the parade organisers that it may be a nice idea to parade by country grouped by continent (to tie in what was feasible in the library with my limited display space). 

Next I created a library guide and a padlet so the students could put up their pictures (we're an iPad school so that's one of the easiest ways).  

Then last week I started introducing the concept to my students in the library lesson.  I adjusted it according to the age. For some, I asked how were ways we could find out about people around the world. We got the usual, go there, live their, eat food, have a friend etc. Then I introduced travelling their through books (depending on the age I told them the library was a magic travel machine), then I read a book from South Africa, my home country (Niki Daly's "Where's Jamela"), and then we had a tour around the world past all the displays and they could pick up a "souvenir" book on the way of whatever they liked.

For other classes my colleague met them at the door and said she was a tour guide and would take them around the world and they could pick up books along the way. 

We then showed the library guide and explained how to get a picture onto padlet, and that they could then put a sticker on the map.

Some classes were more enthusiastic than others - generally the younger students were not very interested in books from other places, they wanted a book from the country they came from - fair enough. 

It was interesting to see where students put books when they made a comment - the aforementioned "inside out" was labeled "Vietnam" by a student, while "Amulet" got a Japanese label based on the author name and origin (although born in Japan, he has lived in the USA since he was 10). 

We've agreed that for the actual UN week each class well get a bundle of 20-30 books from various countries delivered to the classrooms to read during their DEAR time (they get 20 minutes a day).

Hopefully it will all work out! I'm also hoping our parents will want to get involved with their children.

Blokes with Books Club

This post is about a year overdue, but here goes.

Early into my new job as a newly minted Teacher Librarian I started noticing the "lost boys"  of the library.  Those souls who would wander around and between the stacks with a dazed look on their faces. Or they'd be flicking through books without actually registering the contents. Or they'd just park themselves on a chair with the (too popular to let them be borrowed) Guinness Books of records and sit and talk through with "oohs and aahs" with their like-minded mates.  Obviously something.needed.to.be.done.

But equally obvious to my middle aged, white, female mind, I was not the one to do it. Or at least, not to appear to be the one to do it. But should it be a teacher? If so, which teacher? My criteria was young and male, but I didn't know my new colleagues all that well... I settled on our EdTech coach, Tim.  An extremely busy and popular educator, with experience in the classroom and, since moving into the new role with all the classrooms, he was enthusiastic when I suggested it. (Phew).

We collaborated on lesson plan ideas, and books that may "hook" the students. And we were open for business. We emailed teachers from Grades 3-6 and asked if they had any students who they thought may benefit from this group. Most teachers had 1 or 2 students.  The first session started with about 8 students. And quickly word spread that this was a really fun thing to be involved with.  Group members had their own membership badges and a special "learning agreement" for their time in the library. Teachers reported back that the students were more motivated to borrow books and were super enthusiastic about going to the sessions which were held once a week on a Wednesday during the last period (a 40 minute period reserved for literacy leadership). A couple of ELL students were identified who would also benefit from being "one of the blokes" even though their language level wasn't that high and they joined in as well.

The year ended with a bang when I chanced on reading of a book review of "Adventures of a Kid Magician" in February or March. Then of course it was a case of getting Tim's mother to buy 5 copies of the book from Walmart - the only stockist at the time and shipping it to Singapore. It was as if we'd set off fireworks in the library. Basically each chapter leads to clues which unlocks a code to a youtube video showing how to do a magical trick. So the rest of the year involved multiple read-alouds of the chapters and hunting the clues down and desperate attempts by our blokes to be the next in line to read the book! Talk about a magic formula to combine the physical and digital (my review here),

Today was our first official day, starting with going over the essential agreements, one boy who insisted on doing a book talk on a book he was loving (Things Explainer - I've ordered a copy for the library now ) an ice-breaker of Zip Zap Zop followed by "Book Speed Dating" - 3 rounds of 5 minutes of "dating" a book after which the favourite was chosen (or not) for checkout.

Initial Lesson plans (2015/6):

Lesson #	Ice Breaker	Activities
1	Staring Contest	-Choose a Book Any Funny Book/read -Read in the Dark/ Tent -Find a girly book competition/read   -Find a manly book competition/ read
2	Spot The Difference	-Ben Cooperman Read Aloud his book “Gabriel and Five Joshuas”
3	Charades (written on note cards)	-Discuss adventures/ what kind of adventures there are -Read choose your own adventure book
4	Crocodile Tooth Game	Graphic Novels
5	Zip Zap Zop	-Judge A Book By It’s Cover
6	Toilet Paper Mummy	-Monster Books
7	Drawing Charades	-Joke Books
8	Draw Yourself As Cartoon	-Dewey Grams -write down the number of book and to hand to someone else -Use scholastic.com to make a Christmas book wishlist
9	Minefield	-Introduce Legends and Myths with Sinbad Video -Legends and Myths books
10	Zip Zap Zop	-Introduce old comics -Read through old comics
11	Tennis Table Soccer	-Magazine Reading Explain all the neat features of the different magazines
12-end of year	Various icebreakers	Reading of "Adventures of a kid magician" and unlocking the videos