2009 has flown by at the speed of light, and as we come to the end of the year, we once again experience the staffing changes that are a yearly event in any school.
As you will already have heard, next year I am taking on a newly created position at Catholic Education head office in Dutton Park—working in the growing Multimedia/Library centre known as ResourceLink as the Education Officer for Digital Learning.
It is with sadness that I leave your wonderful community. I have very much enjoyed the time I have spent learning with and teaching the students of St Dympna’s, and working with a very dedicated and professional staff. In particular I must thank my two AMAZING library aides, Sue Thomas and Val Nielsen, from whom I have learnt so much and who have supported me in every way. Thank you also to our wonderful volunteers Margaret and Belinda, and finally thank you to the Administration team, Greg, Peter and Liz. It is often noted that the administration of a school is one of the most important determinants of a library’s success within a school, and it is clear to all that here at St Dympna’s, Admin very much value and support this vital area of the school.
Thank you as well to the school community; parents, students and all who have supported our library throughout the year in many different ways.
The end of the year brings with it also the usual tasks such as stocktake! To ensure that the library is in tip top order ready to go for 2010, we will be stocktaking all books in the final weeks of term.
YOU CAN HELP BY ENSURING YOUR CHILD HAS RETURNED ALL OF THEIR BOOKS !!!
Best wishes for a wonderful Christmas, and all the very best for 2010 and beyond.
Well rested and refreshed from holidays, we can now look back on the last week of school, when we celebrated our Bookweek Book Safari! I hope you enjoy this video, that captures the fun and excitement that was Bookweek 2009.
Andy Griffiths is a hugely popular author of many books for kids, including The Cat on the Mat is Flat, The Big Fat Cow Goes Kapow and the ‘Just’ books – Just Stupid, Just Annoying, Just Tricking and Just Shocking. His most recent publication, Just Macbeth, retells Shakespeare like you have never heard it before – and next week, on Wednesday afternoon from 3pm, you can meet Andy at the Chermside Library to support Indigenous Literacy Day.
Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD) aims to help raise urgently needed funds to address the literacy crisis in remote Indigenous communities. This is the third Indigenous Literacy Day. It began five years ago at Riverbend Books in Queensland with a simple question. What could we do to help address the current literacy crisis in remote Indigenous communities? Illiteracy in many of these communities was a common and critical barrier to the full, healthy and happy life many take for granted. Low literacy is consistently linked to poor health, social and economic outcomes.
The good folk at Riverbend Books couldn’t imagine a world without books and reading, and now operate across Australia with the full and enthusiastic support of the Australian Book Industry as the Indigenous Literacy Project.
So visit Chermside Library next Wednesday, meet Andy, and take part in supporting a fantastic and worthwhile cause!
Here’s an example of Animoto – creating very cool and professional videos is just a few clicks away! Just make sure you use music and images that you have permission for…check out creative commons websites such as ccmixter and flickr commons for stress free media!
Here at St Dympna’s we are blessed to have a wonderful, well resourced library for our students, and the presence of full time staff means that the students can access it every day. At many schools, this is not possible, due to a range of factors including available funding, school size and the educational beliefs of the administration.
Even more recently, however, and in light of the decisions in other states to phase out the role of teacher librarian in schools, school libraries have been in the spotlight. Despite Kevin Rudd’s focus on new school libraries in the latest roll out of the stimulus package, there is a growing question about who will staff them, and what the value of a school library is if there is no teacher librarian there to guide the students in accessing the resources available, and to teach them skills in information literacy. The following interview from the ABC radio show ‘Life Matters’ features Mary Manning, from the School Library Association of Victoria. In the interview she succinctly states why school libraries and their staff are so important, and convincingly argues for their continued existence into the ‘digital and information age’.
Welcome one and all to Term 3! The holidays are now just a distant memory, as we hit the ground running for another action packed term!
The most exciting event in the library this term is of course Book Week. At St Dympna’s, we celebrate Book Week in the final week of term, so we can spend some weeks preparing displays and reading the nominated Book Week Books.
This year’s Book Week Theme is Book Safari.
In keeping with this theme, the students are all participating in a variety of library safari lessons early in the term, before we begin reading the Book Week shortlisted books after the Ekka holidays.
So – to find out what each class is doing for the first half of the term, read on!
Prep: I wonder…Reading Safari – Making predictions from the text
Year 1: Jungle Safari – developing research and presentation skills focusing on Jungle animals
Year 2: Dewey Safari – reinforcing last term’s work on locating Non-Fiction texts
Year 3 – Sentence Safari – building rich sentences from key words
Year 4 – Library Safari – accessing Fiction and Non Fiction using the Library Catalogue
Year 5 – Reference Safari – exploring the Reference section looking at Encyclopedias, Dictionaries and Atlases
Year 6 – Genre Safari – reading widely through discovering the variety of different genres in the Senior Fiction section
Year 7 – Source Safari – learning the importance of writing a bibliography, avoiding plagiarism and the role of copyright
Congratulations also to Year 6MC and Year 1N for winning the Golden Shelf Elf award for Term 2. They were the two classes who had the least overdue books during the term. This term the library timetable has changed, so borrowing days are a little different:
Monday: Year 1 (all classes) and Prep (all classes)
Tuesday: Year 6 (all classes), Year 3 (all classes) and 7K
Wednesday: Year 5 (all classes) and Year 2 (all classes)
Thursday: Year 4 (all classes) and Year 7H and 7O’D
I wrote about this two years ago, on my first blog, and I have to say that since then, my thoughts have changed somewhat. My original post focused on the potential of the social networking site : Teachers could post homework assignments on their students’ walls, post educational videos, websites they wanted their students to check out – they could use it to stimulate conversation or debate between students out of school hours, or to invite expert (who also had facebook accounts) to share their thoughts or ideas and also outlined the fact that it is probably too open for school use, and definitely so in a primary school setting.
In the two years that have passed, Facebook has become not just a fun place to do silly quizzes, but a vital communication channel for many – social networking has changed the face of the internet. However, many schools and educational departments completely block any form of this tool – which is, in my opinion, a shame, particularly as this rules out the use of more easily controlled sites, such as Ning.
I have used Ning to promote teacher professional development – you can see my efforts HERE…. but there is definitely scope for the classroom also.
Ning allows users to build their own social networks, which are completely password protected, and offers a great deal more privacy and control than Facebook. Another social networking tool that could also be used in educational settings (and has indeed been designed for such use) is Edmodo; from the site:
What can I do with Edmodo?
Edmodo provides a way for teachers and students to share notes, links, and files. Teachers have the ability to send alerts, events, and assignments to students.
Social networking certainly does seem the way of the future, and while Facebook may remain purely social, it seems that as educators, we need to be on the lookout for new and creative ways of capturing the interest and motivation of students in methods that speak to their modes of communication….
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!
Yes, it is Bookfair time once more at St Dympna’s!
This Friday, all students will have the opportunity to view the books that we have for sale, and to fill out their wishlists.
From Monday to Wednesday the following week, everyone is invited to come along and buy as many books as they wish! We shall have books on a huge range of topics, for every type of reader, from children to adult.
With thanks to Bramble Bay Books and The Book Warehouse, we have an amazing array of stock, and a percentage from every purchase will go directly to our library to enable us to buy even more terrific resources to stock our shelves.
Why not take advantage of this great event to get all of your Christmas and Birthday present shopping done in one place!! The library will be open from 8.30 until 7pm Monday (22 June) and from 8.30 – 3.30pm Tuesday and Wednesday (23 & 24 June), so there is plenty of time for Mums and Dads to browse while the kids are in school, or come together as a family after school or on our late night.
Everyone loves a book, and we hope that everyone will love our fantastic Bookfair!
Our Skeleton Naming competition has been a great success. We raised $62 for the Pyjama Foundation, which was a great effort, and we were overwhelmed with the creative names that were suggested.
Keeping in mind that our skeleton will live here in the library when not in use, we decided to choose a name that not only was suitably ’skeleton-like’ but that also had a link to books and reading – which is why we chose the name
Congratulations to Grace Kavanagh in Year 3 who created this fantastic name! Grace was the proud winner of an Eye Spy computer game. Have fun with that, Grace!
