Statistics From Our School Library

Looking through our school statistics from Access It, our library system, I have realised that we have a school of readers! Boys are as engaged as girls, if not a bit more, and reading a lot. I found the most popular authors which were a surprise. Classics like books by Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss are still very popular, and new classics are emerging, including David Walliams and Andy Griffins. Geronimo Stilton, Daisy Meadows and The 13 Story Treehouse books are also very popular.

I will present class findings to each teacher at our next Comms meeting. I printed off what are the most popular books in each class and who are the students who are not borrowing books. I think giving a personal reflection back to each teacher will help them to know their classes reading patterns better and to be able to engage with that with their class and individual students.

I also gave Ash our reading data for ERO next week.

School Profile for National Library Course

Week 2, Activity 1

Question	Your response
1.     Describe your school location: rural / small town / major urban	Major Urban
2.     What’s your school roll?	625
3.     What year levels does your school cover?	Years 0 - 6
4.     What’s your school decile ranking?	7
5.     Describe the gender mix (% boys vs girls)	280 girls – 345 boys
6.     What are the main ethnicities (% Māori, Pakeha NZ’ers, Pasifika, Asian etc) in your school?	African 12, Chinese 92, Cook Island Maori 8, Fijian 8, Filipino 13, Indian 89, Korean 9, Middle Eastern 11, Pakeha 206 (about 1/3 of school), Maori 78, Samoan 45, Tongan 6, Other Pacific People 5, South East Asian 20 (including Vietnam, Cambodia)
7.     What languages are spoken at home?	Chinese, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, English, Tamil (Sri Lanka), Malayalam, Farsi, Samoan, Tongan, Tuvaluan, Russian, Nepalese, Vietnamese, Cambodian
8.     What % of students have English as their 2nd language?	108 Students – 1/6 of students.
9.     How many ‘special needs’ students in your school?	7 very high needs; 25 high needs.
10.  Is there a local public library that students can access easily?	Yes – Waitakere Library
11.  What % of homes in your school community have Internet access? (an approx. % is fine)	95%
12.  What % of students use handheld digital devices, eg cellphones? (an approx. % is OK)	70%
13.  Are you a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) school?	Yes
14.  How old are your school buildings?	44 years old.
15.  When was the library built? When was it last refurbished (if not new)?	No idea. Last refurbished over 10 years ago.
16.  Is your library centrally located on the school campus?	Yes.
17.  What are your library opening hours? (This may not be the same as the paid hours for library staff)	9 – 3, with half an hour to an hour over lunch. Student librarians are in during this time, plus Julie or me.
18.  Does your library have a relationship with local pre-schools? Do parents & pre-schoolers visit your library?	We have a strong relationship with local preschools but they don’t use our library.
19.  How many teachers currently use your school library?  What kinds of use is that? (eg bringing in classes, sending groups of students, using for their own preparation, etc)	All classes have an allocated time of 45 minutes in the library. Some junior classes share their time and have an hour and a half with both classes sharing the space.
20.  If your library has a Web presence and/or presence on the school Intranet, who uses it? Parents? Students? Teachers?	We have a library website, but I don’t update it that much. I can work on that.

Reflections on National Library Course

I am currently studying as part of a 5 week online National Library Course.

Here are my reflections from Weeks 1 & 2.

Week 1

Reflect on the articles and videos. How do these articles and videos challenge your understanding of the role of the library? How did you feel about the potential role and skills required of library staff in such libraries?

Reflecting on this first week I have already implemented one change. As I am a teacher with a library unit, I don't have as much time in the library as I would like. However I have started promoting the library at our Whanau Times (assemblies) and this week I titled it "Our library, the heart of our school." I want to get student and staff buy in that the library and it's people are our heart, and to give a school wide language to that. 

I am starting to see that for real change to happen it would be amazing to have a full time librarian in the library. Whilst this is not a possibility at the moment for our school,  a dream of mine would be to be released for one day a week to have the whole day in the library. This week's study has made me see that research and experience backs this idea. 

It has been cool this week to see the possibilities for the library in the future, that it is not a space that is now redundant in our modern times. If anything, it is more necessary and invaluable to our students and communities. 

Week 2

Record the key characteristics of your school community.

My school is a mix of cultures with majority being Indian, Chinese, NZ Pakeha, Maori and Pacific Island, with smaller numbers of South East Asia and Middle Eastern.

Your library may already have programmes to support specific groups of students, but your reading and the Forum discussions are likely to have triggered new ideas. Jot these down in your Learning Journal. Who would you need to collaborate with to further develop some of these ideas?

I like the idea someone suggested in a forum about a station on easier chapter books for children transitioning to chapter books. 

Over the past year I have been trying to diversify our collection to include more cultures and languages, but I have found it hard to find Pasifika books. I found a website that lists the top 20, but no where does it say where to purchase them from. Our Maori and NZ collection is pretty strong. It was interesting to learn about the different languages that are spoken at home and to realise that these are not reflected in our library connection, so I need to research where to buy more of those. We just bought a whole lot of Pasifika language books, but they are pretty junior. I would love to find out more about where I can just buy books with Pasific characters, especially chapter books. 

I would like to learn more about programmes that are run in the library to support specific groups of students. 

Looking at the wealth of data you've now accessed from your ILS were there any surprises? Did it raise any concerns? What were some of the key points coming through? Who will you share this information with in your school, and how? What other usage reports might you now decide to create?

My own class surprised me! Out of 29 children, only 22 had books out. I need to start paying more attention haha! I think I will print out the reports for teachers so that they can pinpoint children in their class who are not engaged with the library as well. 

Otherwise our library is pretty well used, and I think as I promote it during Whanau Times, especially as a place to hang out at lunchtimes, that might up the borrowing. I know that some children don't realise they can exchange books at lunchtimes too, not just allocated class time, so I'm talking about that at this week's Whanau Time. 

I still need to look more at different reports and statistics during the next few months as I haven't ever used this tool before. 

Do you need to update your library procedures manual?

Yes, as in we need to write one! Are there any templates you could provide for us??

It's good to be starting at the very beginning, so that as I learn things from tutorials on AccessIt and from others on this course, I can start to document them as I go. 

Senior School Observation

This morning I observed Alannah Lupe teaching writing to her Year 5 and 6 class. They started with a warm up on a whole class google doc adding a subordinate clause to a sentence Alannah had provided. Students were working collaboratively in groups of 2-3, each taking turns to contribute ideas and words to improve the sentence. They also highlighted the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in each sentence. Each group had their own box to add to, but could read other students ideas and gather inspiration from the whole class.

Alannah's class work very well together. She is an expert in expecting collaboration from her students and they understand that they can learn from each other. Throughout the morning I heard the students sharing ideas in small groups and with the whole class, giving feedback and feed forward in a very accepting way. The feedback and feedforward was oral and in writing in the google doc. Students were very clear on the expectations around this. Alannah said they wouldn't have been at this level in term 1, but through lots of practise they were well trained up.

Students moved on to ANZAC writing after the warm up. One student read his aloud to the class and also received feedforward and feedback. This feels like a very natural part of the class.

Implications for my practise

It was great to see feedback and feedforward done so well in Alannah's class. I can definitely step this up in my own class, giving clear expectations as to what this entails. Feedback - something they did well. Feedforward - something to improve on. 

I also loved seeing the shared google doc in action. I feel that my class are comfortable now with being familiar with their devices and that they would be able to handle something similar. I might try it this afternoon with a shared doc for ignition for our intro into Oceans.

NZ Authors James Russell, Dawn McMillan and Janet Martin

Yesterday I went to the Dorothy Butler Bookshop in Ponsonby to meet James Russell, a New Zealand author of the Dragon Brothers books. He did a reading from his first novel and demonstrated the augmented reality on the maps in his books with his ipad. As we talked I found out he is in the middle of promoting his books and is doing school tours, so I have emailed him about dates for coming to our school. 

Dragon Brothers Books

New Zealand authors are amazing because they are so accessible to schools. Last year I organised for Janet Martin and partner to come in as part of our Book Week. They had puppets and sang songs from their books. I thought they were best suited to the junior school, but surprisingly the seniors enjoyed them too. It just shows the power of a good story and song, and a real life performance. 

Janet Martin's website

Last year during the same book week I made an experiential book walk which read Dawn Macmillan's story Colour the Stars. Ash had printed out the story on huge pieces of paper and each page had a station to experience alongside the words. 

The heater was to experience the feeling of the colour yellow.

What green feels like.

Bubbles were the stars bursting from the sky.

The stars are as abundant as the grains of sand.

I emailed the pictures of the Book Walk to Dawn McMillan and she said she would love to skype us. I only just got around to organising that meeting this year, so Room 12 were lucky enough to have an interview and book reading from her. She was amazing, and as an ex teacher built fantastic rapport with my students. 

We love authors in Aotearoa!