Classroom Book Recommendation Display

Posted on by
Reply

by Rebecca Moore and Kacie Simpson

Overlake’s seventh-grade English teacher, Kacie Simpson, is passionate about reading. “Establishing a culture of reading, where students are excited to read, has been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” she says. One issue she considers is how students can find good books to read. She knows parents also wonder about this, as they often request book recommendations for their children. While Kacie loves reading, of course, she knows that, “collectively, my students have read more books than I have.” Thinking how she could harness this resource, she decided to create a classroom “display where students could give book recommendations and share the types of books they are interested in with their peers.”

For her display, she created a large wall poster of a bookshelf. Next, she printed blank book spine templates in different sizes, to vary the height of the “books” and make the shelf arrangement look more natural. Students copied or recreated the spine of a book they would recommend to their classmates, choosing the template that made the most sense for the book. For in-class work, Kacie provided scissors and colored pencils, though several students also worked at home to have more time and add more detail.

While the students worked in class, Kacie noticed a lot of “great conversations about books.” She heard many positive comments, like, “Oh, I love that book!” That worked well for her goal of instilling in the students the knowledge that “the best source of what to read is their peers,” because seventh graders know what other seventh graders tend to enjoy reading. In the finished spines, Kacie found it interesting to see that fantasy was the most popular genre by a mile, and that Rick Riordan scored as the most popular author. The titles that surprised her the most were the non-fiction titles Blue Chip Kids, by David Bianchi, and Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, books that she doesn’t “always associate with 12-13 year olds reading.”

When students finished the spines, Kacie organized them roughly by genre on the poster “shelves.” To add to the display’s welcoming appeal, Kacie added a picture of her cat sleeping on a shelf, as well as some “additional decorative touches.” As a librarian, I love it, and think it was an amazing project!

Partial Booklist

Note: I couldn’t read all of the titles, which is why this is partial

Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

The Martian, Andy Weir

Scythe, Neal Shusterman

Space Case, Stuart Gibbs

The hunger games, Suzanne Collins

Catching fire, Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

The ballad of songbirds and snakes, Suzanne Collins

Atherton: the House of power, Patrick Carman

One piece, Eiichiro Oda

The ultimate hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, Douglas Adams

Legend, Marie Lu

Foundation, Isaac Asimov

The lion of Mars, Jennifer Holm

The giver, Lois Lowry

Ready player one, Ernest Cline

Iron widow, Xiran Jay Zhao

Animal farm, George Orwell

Home body, Rupi Kaur

What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Randall Munroe

Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari

Little white lies, Gemma Townley

The naturals, Jennfer Barnes

The inheritance game, Jennifer Barnes

The final gambit, Jennifer Barnes

Spy school, Stuart Gibbs

One of us is lying, Karen McManus

Five survive, Karen McManus

A good girl’s guide to murder, Holly Jackson

The land of stories: the wishing spell, Chris Colfer

The Penrose Series, Tony Ballantyne

Wings of fire, Tui Sutherland

Throne of glass, Sarah J. Maas

The theft of sunlight, Intisar Khanani

The tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo

Keeper of the lost cities, Shannon Messenger

The school for good and evil, Soman Chainani

The hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

Harry Potter and the sorcerer‘s stone, J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the half-blood prince, J.K. Rowling

Summoner 3: The Battlemage, Taran Matharu

Red queen, Victoria Aveyard

Heartless, Marissa Meyer

The lost hero, Rick Riordan

The house of Hades, Rick Riordan

The lightning thief, Rick Riordan

The sea of monsters, Rick Riordan

The last Olympian, Rick Riordan

When you trap a tiger, Tae Keller

Two Degrees, Alan Gratz

The silent patient, Alex Michaelides

Ink and ashes, Valynne Maetani

Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown, Steve Sheinkin

Front desk, Kelly Yang

Seaglass summer, Anjali Banerjee

Out of my mind, Sharon Draper

Simon sort of says, Erin Bow

The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Far from the tree, Robin Benway

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello‘s library, Chris Grabenstein

Blended, Sharon Draper

If he had been with me, Laura Nowlin

The Explorers Academy: the nebula secret, Trudi Trueit

Restart, Gordon Korman

Darius the great is not OK, Adib Khorram

Imogen obviously, Becky Albertalli

Wonder, R.J. Palacio

Posted, John David Anderson

The summer I turned pretty, Jenny Han

Prisoner B, Alan Gratz

Projekt, Alan Gratz

Grenade, Alan Gratz

The book thief, Markus Zusak

Little women, Louisa May Alcott

Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen

World in between: based on a true refugee story, Kenan Trebincevic, Susan Shapiro

The downstairs girl, Stacey Lee

Between shades of gray, Ruta Sepetys

Flooded: requiem for Johnstown, Ann Burg

The enigma game,

Blue Chip kids, David Bianchi

Some joy in a time of busy

Posted on by
3

Many years ago, our library had the idea to celebrate National Polkadot Day…but as a secret among the adults on campus. We dressed up and decorated the library doors…and waited to see who noticed.

The first year we had a number of employees opt-in.
As an oh-so-subtle nudge, we also decorated the doors.

(Fun fact: Jole — our Director of Library Services — just reminded me that this was the first time we realized we could decorate our doors, a permanent tradition now, that changes with the feels we want to deliver….)

Through informal channels it became clear that people loved polkadot day — they asked us if we could do it again. We decided it should not be the same, so secretly celebrated National Stripes Day, instead. We witness the joy it brought our colleagues, because that next year, more people dressed up:

We had an even better turnout the next year!

Over the years (all this was back in maybe 2015-16-ish), we have periodically had another employee National Polkadot Day secret celebration. It is always fun when, partway thorough the day, students start asking questions.

In 2024, our colleagues really wanted to experience some joint, community-building fun, and our numbers grew even more!

This year, Jole proposed the idea of having an employee spirit week. Our colleagues were IN. We sent out a list of themes and selected which ones to use by vote. Because our Edible Book Festival was on Monday, and Tuesday was April 1st, we launched spirit week on Tuesday with monochrome:

Usually we just take a picture of whoever can be at the library at one time. This year, colleagues were so passionate that we ended up taking three pictures — and still did not get everyone!
Of course, we also needed a librarian team photo.

Today, we are enjoying denim-on-denim, and will be taking another group photograph, as we will tomorrow with Funky Socks and Sandals Day and on Friday with, of course, Polkadot Day.

Denim on Denim (on Denim?)

Students are starting to give us side-eye, and apparently decided yesterday that it could be nothing intentional (how could All. That. Yellow. not be intentional??) because if we did dress intentionally in monochrome, then wouldn’t we have done Monochrome Monday? Why would we dress in monochrome on a Tuesday? This morning, when a bunch of colleagues in denim were talking, at least one student seemed to have a dawning realization.

Overall, though, it is good for our adult community. It helps us find joy and a united sense of purpose. Enough people are not opting in (or don’t own enough denim, for example) that there is no shame in not doing it.

You can find a lot of ideas by searching for [staff underground spirit week]. It has been a great thing for us, and I think we can all use a little joy!

Battle of the Books on Steroids (Or, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time)

Posted on by
2

I’ve been running Battle of the Books for over thirty years, at my various schools. Though the books changed from year to year, the format remained the same: two hours, rounds of twenty questions, each question phrased, “In which book…” with the answer being the author and title.

Over the last few years, though, I have made some changes. First, I joined with two other local schools for the competition, which cycled between the schools for several years. Then, many of my students decided not to participate because they didn’t want to miss any class time, especially the half a day required for a field trip to another school. With the gracious acceptance of the two other schools, we moved to a virtual Battle, but my students declined to participate because a two hour Battle still meant missing a class. So I split the Battle into two parts on two different days, one a preliminary with just my students, and one the virtual final with the other schools. That way, participants only missed study halls. In addition, I shortened rounds to ten questions, and the winning two teams from the prelims went on to the final Battle with the other schools. Problem solved, right?

Yeah…no. I was still struggling for participation.

A couple of years ago, after National Geographic ended GeoBee, our 7th grade social studies teacher devised his own GeoBee. He hosted it during an assembly block, and it was lots of fun! Changing up the formats of the rounds, he also made it team-based rather than individual, which worked well. I wondered if I could do something similar with Battle of the Books.

I started by running a Battle of the Books club in which students would help determine which formats would work best. I surveyed the kids about these possible options, suggestions coming from both me and them:

  • Jeopardy
  • Pictionary or charades round with book titles
  • Relay: Teams at opposite ends of a space, teacher in the middle. One person from each team runs to the teacher. Both get the same question on a slip of paper, then run back to their team to consult. When the team has an answer, someone runs to tell the teacher. Points for most correct answers and fastest time.
  • Traditional format
  • Kahoot
  • Quiz Bowl: Teams, each student has a buzzer, question asked to the group, first to buzz in gets to answer. Correct answer leads to an additional question.
  • Mini-Rounds: A person from each team starts out, a round of four questions is asked, whoever buzzes in first gets the question. After four questions, a new person from each team replaces former person.
  • Breakout Box: There’s a box with several locks on it. Each lock is worth a certain number of questions. [I hadn’t worked out any more than that.]
  • Snowballs: Questions are crumpled into balls and teams throw them at each other. Every question caught is one the team gets the chance to answer.
  • Academic Whiz Kid: Each student on a team gets a round of questions only they can answer. Individual scores add up to form the team score.
  • Scavenger hunt: [No clue how this would work!]
  • Escape-room type clues: [No clue how this would work!]
  • Blook-It: Online. I haven’t looked into this yet, so it would need some testing out.
  • Gimkit: Online. I haven’t looked into this yet, so it would need some testing out.

After testing a few of these, I settled on traditional format, Jeopardy, Kahoot, Relay, and possibly Pictionary, depending on time. To further entice participants, we dropped the list from thirteen to eleven books, and instead of requiring participants to read at least three books, we lowered the bar to one.

I usually run a “mock” Battle of the Books during announcements to raise interest, and the mock Battle with different formats went well; I did get more sign ups than in previous years. Time for me, the other librarians, and generous colleagues to start reading the books, writing up the questions, and planning the rounds.

It was when I set about reformatting traditional questions into questions for Jeopardy, Kahoot, and relays that I realized…wow, this was going to take a lot longer than I thought! Because I run a required 5th grade Battle plus the voluntary 6th-8th grade Battle, I had to create eight Jeopardy rounds, six Kahoot rounds, five relay rounds, title Pictionary, and eleven traditional rounds. It took hours and hours, and I would definitely ask for help if we do it again!

I got a test run of the format with my 5th grade, who all participate. Though it was a little chaotic, 5th grade generally is, and the only format that didn’t work very well was the relays. The students participating enjoyed it, but the non-participants didn’t get to hear the questions, as they would with the other rounds, so they were bored. Plus, even though we’d formatted the questions so that every slip of paper listed every possible title and author, with boxes to tick off, the judges checking the slips had to check the answer key for everything. That meant that working out the score took almost as long as the round, so all the kids were bored and the teacher was stressed out trying to finish. I decided that when I ran the relay rounds in my 6th-8th prelims, the non-participating teams would do the scoring.

So, my 6th-8th prelims ran smoothly, right? Yeah, no. Despite as many reminders as I could manage, a third of the students forgot or decided to ghost, which meant the teams were so unbalanced I had to reshuffle on the fly. No one was really happy about it, but we struggled on. Then a few of the missing students actually showed up because they remembered, so we had to shuffle the teams again, and again no one was really happy with it. At least the technology worked!

My plan for the relay rounds failed, because the kids weren’t any faster at scoring than the teachers, and most were completely confused. So, note to self, never do relays again. In the end, we couldn’t come up with any winning teams to go on to the finals, because the teams had been so shuffled. I told the kids to let me know if they wanted to participate in the final, and I put together two teams from that list.

On to the final! As this was virtual, there were all the usual headaches of trying to remember our Pandemic knowledge of Microsoft Teams meetings, Polycom cameras, and sharing screens. One of our new tech staff worked hard to get it sorted out for me, with all the various inputs and outputs, sound, screen sharing, microphones, etc. This time, all of my students showed up on time and the other two schools signed on at the right time as well.

Everything went great until we got to the Jeopardy rounds. No matter how much I tried, I could not get the screen to share without showing all the answers. I ended up reading the questions off my phone, which was far from ideal, but the kids gamely rolled with it. The template I used also had a glitch in that followed links didn’t change color, so I never knew (in any of the Battle sessions) which questions had already been chosen, and the system I came up with instead didn’t work well and students felt it wasn’t entirely fair. The Kahoot went off without a hitch on our end, but was apparently glitchy for the other schools. We multiplied the Kahoot scores by .009 (90 being the highest possible score in a traditional round) to bring them into line with the other scores. In Jeopardy, each question was worth the same number of points, for fairness’ sake.

So, would I attempt multiple format again? Probably not for the three-school Battle, due to the complicated technology issues. For Battles on campus, the kids seemed to enjoy the new formats, so I’d probably try them again if I can solve these problems: 1. The time and effort needed to convert the questions into different formats. 2. Getting students to show up at the right time and place.

And that’s all the wisdom I have, folks! (For certain values of “wisdom,” anyway…)

Spoiler alert: Maybe don’t start with medieval history

Posted on by
Reply

Good morning! This is just a brief update to introduce you to what I hope to have great news to write about later.

Last spring, I was lucky enough to attend a Bay Area Independent School Librarians meeting at which Brian Thomas, of Saint Mary’s College High School, introduced us to using roll-playing games, specifically murder mystery parties, to let students experience history.

His school schedule (they have a week-long, all-day elective that allowed travel and more) was different from mine, but the idea lit my imagination. I immediately proposed to our new seventh grade History teacher that we try it out, and she was willing.

So began my journey to find a medieval world history topic with enough primary sources to create a unit assessment for seventh graders.

I look forward to sharing this journey, but today happens to be the launch of the project. So.

Cross your fingers and wish me the best.

We will see how this goes, and next time I will share the challenges and triumphs of this endeavor.

Want to Rizz Up Your Library Catalog Lesson? Throw Some Zombies in It!

Posted on by
6

One of the skills I teach to incoming fifth graders is how to use our online catalog. The lesson is brief, so I start by going over how to access the catalog, how to search and filter/narrow by wild cards or phrase searching, and how to interpret the catalog record. Necessary, but boring!

A former librarian had spiced up the practice part of the lesson by using a story full of blanks to be filled with words from catalog searches based on clues. I liked the idea, but thought the story—‘Mr. Dewey’s Naughty Boy’—wasn’t exactly riveting. So I wrote my own story, tailored to our catalog, though I’ll admit I had to add a couple of no-copy records to the catalog to make it work (#Sorry-Not-Sorry).

When I introduce the story, the class and I do the first blank together, so I can show them the process. I emphasize how to interpret the clue so they know what to look up, and emphasize that they should find the most unusual word in the clue to use as a keyword rather than laboriously type in the entire clue (which they still do, because, of course. #FacePalm). Then I pass out slips with one clue on each, and the students work in teams to solve them. At the end, I read the story aloud, calling on them to fill in the missing words.

Below is the story, and here’s our catalog: see how you do! (And if you just want to see the completed story, click here.)

The Scene: The police received an emergency call from the Overlake Library. When they arrived, they found the library abandoned. Windows and doors were smashed, computers tipped over, and books lay all over the floor. The books had been ripped apart and mangled. What happened?

Clues from Eyewitness Accounts

1. It was a normal day in the library until all the students heard a strange sound, like a:

__________________________________

Title of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book by Laban Hill

2. The students in the library heard hundreds of voices shouting for:

________________________________

Title of a book by Sherre Phillips

3. When the horde descended on the library, it sounded as if someone had taken too literally:

___________________________________

The first six words in the title of a book by Rain Newcomb  

4. The police received an emergency phone call from someone who said the library was being attacked by:

__________________________________

Creatures from a baseball book by Paolo Bacigalupi

5. All of the students thought they’d get famous if they became:

_________________________________

Title of Emmanuel Guibert’s only nonfiction book (call number 070.4)

6. Each student in the library whipped out a:

____________________________

Technology in the title of a Myth-O-Mania  series book about Persephone

7. Ms. McCandlish shouted over the chaos.  “Don’t worry! I have a book called…”

____________________________

Title of a book by Max Brooks (look him up as an author)

8. After Ms. McCandlish told the students what to do, each threw a:

________________________________

Title of a book by Karen Brookfield

9. One student threw:

 _________________________________

Title of a book by Clive Upton

10. The creature ate the book and started spouting:

_______________________________

    Title of a book written or edited by “Peter Washington” (be sure to use the quotation marks!)

    11. One student threw:

    ________________

    Title of a book by Alessandro Taverna

    12. The creature ate the book and became a:

    _____________________________

    Last name of the author of Under Shifting Glass

    13. One student threw:

    _________________________________

    First three words in the title of a book by Terry Lee Stone

    14. The creature ate the book and started:

    _________________________________

    Title of a book by Amy Gordon

    15. Ms. McCandlish shouted, “Keep throwing! They’ve got:

    ______________________________!”

    First two words in the title of a book by Nancy Pearl from 2003 (Call number: 011.73)

    16. The students threw as many books as:

    _______________________________

    The number of “splendid suns” in a book by Khaled Hosseini

    17. While the creatures were distracted, Ms. McCandlish whispered to the raven statue:

    ____________________________

    Title of a book by Kelly Creagh

    18. Ms. McCandlish led the kids to safety through a:

    _________________________________

    Title of a book by Betty Cavanna

    19. To explain where the creatures had gone, Ms. McCandlish said: “I think what happened to them is…”

    _________________________________

    What happened to Henry in a book by Oliver Jeffers. (Read the book’s summary!)

    20. Ms. McCandlish said: “The books were:

    __________________________

    The title of a book by Sonia Levitin 

    White Paper and Webinar(s) on Digital Censorship

    Posted on by
    Reply

    If you are looking for an update on your freedom to access information, we have two excellent resources right now:

    1. Congratulations to our own Jo Melinson, who — along with Connie Williams and Mary Ann Harlan — have done us proud by thinking through and writing a white paper: “Access to Online Subscription Content in K12 Schools through the School Library,” recently published in The Political Librarian.
    2. Tomorrow we all have a compelling opportunity to hear from Jim Duncan of the Colorado Library Consortium, Lindsey Kimery of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians, Emily Knox of the UIUC School of Information Sciences, and Sarah Lamdan of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom will join Michelle Reed, Director of Programs at Library Futures, about what is up with digital censorship. The webinar is hosted by Library Futures, who are actually coming out with a report on this topic, as well. It is meaningful to see another group take on this important topic. You can register here.

    Reading Culture Survey

    Posted on by
    Reply

    At the start of the year, wanting to build our reading culture, a few teachers and I formed a reading culture committee. For our first action, we decided to survey the students about their reading. We would use their responses to determine our next steps. With the bribe of being entered into a raffle for homeroom cookies, over 70 of our 200+ middle schoolers responded, and here are their responses. For questions about “other” responses, if the responses were minimal or uninformative, I omitted the results here.

    1. Anything else you’d like to say about your reading?

    • I love reading, and I read mostly young adult fiction, fantasy, or romance. I don’t read as much as I used to because of the amounts of homework.
    • I love to read and it is fun to see all the different ways the author wrote the book.
    • I love finding out the answers to the mysteries performed by the book and author!!!
    • I love reading ([My friend] made me write this, but it is true)
    • I like reading adventure books and mystery books.
    • I read a lot and like reading! but sometimes other things get in the way.
    • I love reading especially when I need a break so I might join the focus club.
    • No but I want to know why we are doing this survey.
    • I get thirty minutes of reading time, because I listen to audiobooks in the car. I get no actual reading time at home, because [of other obligations].
    • I really like to read on my own, but when someone tells me to read, I feel like I don’t want to read anymore.
    • I like reading, but do less if I have too much other work or activities.
    • I like writing books.
    • Nothing about reading, but I love cookies!
    • I especially love historical-fiction/fiction.

    Conclusions
    We can see that for students who read, while regular print books are still the most popular reading material, they are also reading multiple other formats. I find that encouraging, and hope by listing all of those options as reading, students who might not have considered themselves readers will re-think that.

    Many students do not read a whole lot each week. We found their reasons telling, as the top two were too much homework and too many other obligations. Based on this, we decided we needed to find them more time to read at school. We are planning a “drop everything and read” wellness event, in which they will all read in their homerooms for a block. In addition, students who choose not to join an affinity group will instead join a “drop everything and read” group during fortnightly affinity group meetings. We are also working on setting up an evening for student writers to read from their works, since so many are writers.

    Building reading culture is certainly a marathon! It’s especially so when all of us are so busy that our reading culture group finds it hard to meet. However, we are moving forward bit by bit, and plan to keep at it. If you have some great ideas that have worked at your school, please add them in the comments!

    Solutions Journalism: A Happy Habit, A Happy Use-case for Information Literacy

    Posted on by
    4

    Please see comments for a stream-of-consciousness update on how the lesson went and my faculty and students’ responses to Solutions Journalism. TBM 01/10/2025

    Happy new year!

    Fortunately, I am getting to start my new calendar year at school with Global Week, our ever-inspiring intersession. This year, our theme is “Bridging Divides: The Art of Listening, The Journey of Learning.” Overall, this topic means we are learning how to fight polarization.

    To my great delight, I was asked to run a class on Solutions Journalism ahead of our final speaker, who works in that field. I’ve long been interested in this style of reporting, and was delighted to have a reason to learn more about the concept. As the child of an old-school journalist, it is exciting to see a movement trying to shift away from “if it bleeds, it leads” (the historical version of clickbait, one might argue) and instead look at news focused on positivity and hope.

    It is fascinating to dig into what that premise looks like in practice. A far cry from human interest and hero-worship, I am finding Solutions Journalism to be an approach that allows room and provides methods for difficult discussions, while drawing on the evidence-based standards that I value from growing up discussing my father’s work.

    As articulated by the Solutions Journalism Network, the four principles of the approach are:
    “1 Response: Focuses on a response to a social problem — and on how that response has worked, or why it hasn’t;
    “2 Insight: Shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters to a newsroom’s audience;
    “3 Evidence: Provides data or qualitative results that indicate effectiveness (or a lack thereof); and
    “4 Limitations: Places responses in context; doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings.”

    What I like about this framing is that it leaves room for hope. Even when programs go wrong (which the method encourages journalists to write about), the goal is not to assess and place blame, but to analyze what we have learned so we can do better next time.

    Even more consistently, the method gets away from all the messiness of the (broadly misunderstood) notion of “objectivity” of media, which carries not only a history of enabling limited perspectives in storytelling that glossed over social ills (like racism) but which also somehow got us to this idea that we have to pick two sides (no more, no fewer) and give them equal weight. It does not call for pro-and-con retellings, but asks journalists to look at a tried solution to a problem and see strengths, admit weaknesses, and embrace nuance.

    The mindset is, in and of itself, about bridging divides. The foundational attention to complicating narratives rests, in part, on the notion that accepting common pro/con narratives on a topic are standing in the way of our gaining real understanding of what is going right or wrong. There is a sense of transcending political boundaries to ask larger — perhaps even more real? — questions and get at what can actually be done to improve a situation.

    As a research skills educator, I find the ways evidence is defined and used in this type of reporting to be deeply meaningful. The standard is whether evidence helps the reader understand why something happened the way it did, rather than simply, “here is someone saying something angry/happy/tearful about our topic.”

    As an educator of growing humans, I am profoundly grateful that there is a way my students can engage with societal problems that focuses hard on the potential for a better world.

    If you want to check out some articles, the Solutions Journalism Network has a number of ways for you to approach finding examples, from their annual round-ups of favorite articles, to their international database of examples (warning: short reads are not the same as quality reads in this method), to their collections of examples such as heroes not hero worship and constructively reporting on failures.

    OK, so, um. The whole idea of this form of journalism is to write about tried solutions, not ideas. I have read about the method, but am only using it with students for the first time today. If you have worked with Solutions Journalism in your school, would you let me know in the comments or by email?

    May this new year bring many positive solutions into your world.

    Escape Rooms

    Posted on by
    3

    When I first heard about escape rooms several years ago, I thought they sounded like an amazing activity the kids would love, but I doubted my ability to put one together. Then a teacher approached me with the hope of running a Harry Potter escape room, so I started doing some research. After finding a librarian who had created such a room, Beth Bouwman of the Somerset County Library System in NJ, I got her permission to duplicate her escape room. She sent me all of the details, the teacher purchased props and locks, and everything went well. During the pandemic, I adapted that escape room into an online version. Instead of the usual Google Forms style, I used a Google Slide with added, clickable images, so it wasn’t a linear experience.

    Later, I borrowed several escape room plans from Erica Testani, a Virginia librarian: Babysitters’ Club, Wings of Fire, Percy Jackson, and Taylor Swift. At that point, I had facilitated enough escape rooms to attempt creating one of my own. I started with another Percy Jackson one, and just finished a Keeper of the Lost Cities one. While the rooms take a lot of prep, set up and break down time, the kids love them and I enjoy the creativity of putting them together.

    Want to create a room of your own? Here are some hopefully useful tips.

    Plot

    Start with your theme, perhaps a popular book series to connect with the library, or some other aspect of popular culture. Then you need a starting point. What are the kids trying to find, or do? Did Percy lose Annabeth’s baseball cap? Do you need to complete a Taylor Swift Lover House with icons from all of her eras? Did Kristy’s little sister go missing and you have to find her? It doesn’t have to be a weighty goal! The premise should include the first clue. I generally do a linear escape room, in that the boxes must be opened in a certain order, so the starting clue is key.

    Boxes

    My escape rooms are more like solving a series of boxes with different types of lock. I generally go with five or six boxes. If you have a kit from Breakout.edu, you probably have some boxes already, but I’ve also repurposed sturdy gift boxes and plastic containers, using a drill to make holes for the locks.

    Locks

    You’ll want a variety of locks. If you have a Breakout.edu kit, you’ll likely have a multilock, which is really useful because you can change out the wheels and use it as a word lock, color lock, or directonal lock. I also have additional word locks, number locks (three and four digit), and key locks. VERY IMPORTANT: Because you can change the combinations of your locks, be SURE to label each lock with its current combination before putting it away after your escape room event is over!

    Puzzles

    Here’s where you can go crazy! Codes, ciphers, runes, jigsaws, maps, clues in blacklight (you need the pen and the blacklight), auditory clues that must be replicated, riddle-poems, baking soda snowballs to be melted with vinegar, Jeffersonian wheel ciphers, red-film clues, edible clues, liquid clues, color clues, pretty much anything you can think of. Tactile clues are great; our kids spend so much time on screens that things they can touch and manipulate are welcome.

    Décor

    This will obviously vary with your theme, but doesn’t need to be elaborate. Posters, books, props, some red herrings. Consult with students if you’re less familiar with the material, and source items with the help of other teachers. Our theater’s costume closet has supplied a lot of décor for me, as has one of the Latin teachers (a Roman helmet for Percy Jackson). A science teacher helped me by three-D printing a lightning-bolt cookie cutter. Other teachers have responded to my queries for things like a kid’s xylophone and a “thinking cap.” All of the teachers were happy to be asked and enjoyed the opportunity to participate.

    Scheduling

    One of the drawbacks of doing an escape room is that it doesn’t work well for more than a few kids at a time. My ideal group size is five, maybe six, so everyone gets a chance to participate. When we had a scheduling glitch and I ended up with too many kids, I divided them into two groups and they alternated solving the clues. Because I have small groups, I need to run several sessions of each escape room, and multiple setting up/breaking down times does add more time overall. Plus, to ensure that the kids solve the room in the space of the lunch block, I usually have to give them a lot of hints.

    Sharing

    I am happy to share any of my escape room setups, and Erica gave me permission to share hers as well (with credit). If you’d like to run any of these, or you have additional questions about setting up this type of escape room, feel free to contact me. If you have one you’d like to share, please also contact me—I’m always looking for new ideas!

    Mid-Year Check In

    Posted on by
    1

    Back in August, I shared my 3 big goals for the year – weeding, dynamic shelving, and signage. Now that we’ve reached the end of semester, I thought I might share my progress on these goals.

    Goal 1: Weeding

    As of Tuesday, the weeding is finished! I worked my way through all of our fiction genres one by one and started with the criteria that it had to have been purchased more than 8 years ago (just before I started at Webb – not sure I’m emotionally ready to omit fault in my own purchases yet) and that it hadn’t been checked out since the library moved to the upper school building 5 years ago. I pulled a lot of series this go-round that I had tried to keep together during past weeds – I kept the first 3 of Wheel of Time but gave away the other dozen of the series, and all of the Princess Diaries got the boot since the first one went missing last year. There were also a few that I kept after all because I think they’ll get some traction once they’re front facing. I’ll admit, this step would have gone quicker if I’d had more access to boxes and more places to store them (I lost my work room in the move), but I think a semester is pretty good timing as a solo librarian. Most of the books were shipped to ThriftBooks a few days ago, where they will handle the selling and share the profits with us. The others are going to our local Friends of the Library, and those few boxes are the only thing standing between me and totally clear shelves.

    Goal 2: Dynamic Shelving

    This goal was almost entirely dependent on the weeding happening first to make room for more front-facing displays. I started by moving our year-round state book award display to a free standing shelf, which gave me an entire stack of extra shelves to work with. So far, I’ve shifted and re-organized Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, and Humor, and all the extra space from that former display has now been used up. The dynamic shelving worked really well in Fantasy because there were tons of series to stack together. I even felt like I made even more extra space in Fantasy! But in Historical Fiction, where there are very few series, all of the extra space was eaten up really quickly. Humor ended exactly where it had before, which isn’t going to give me much room when I get to our larges genre, Realistic Fiction. I might have to go back and rework some of these first sections later.

    I also realized very quickly that I didn’t have enough book ends to make books front-facing, which is what Kelsey Bogan recommends in her blog series about how to do dynamic shelving. I ordered more from Demco – these are the ones I like – and have already used up all the new ones too. I think I need to find a cheaper option for this project, because I actually like the way they work better than a traditional book display stand. They keep the book much more upright than a display stand, which seems to put less stress on the spine, especially for hefty tomes like the Harry Potters and Game of Thrones.

    The shelves are very busy, but students do seem to be more engaged with what’s on the shelves. I love that series are very clearly together. I think this might even help to speed up shelving, or at least help students make fewer mistakes when replacing books they decided not to check out after all. I haven’t had any true feedback from anyone yet, but I’m inviting teachers for a drop in “grab a book and coffee” on the half day before break starts (thanks for idea Lee De Groft!), and I’m interested to see what they say.

    Goal 3: Signage

    And this is where the progress ends, because I haven’t thought any more about signage since I wrote that blog post. It’s still on my list, but it will have to entirely happen next semester. If you love your signage, especially for nonfiction, I’d love to see it!

    So that’s where I’m at midway through the year – 1.5 out of 3 – but that’s why we make annual goals, right? How are you doing on your goals this year? Anything AISL can help you with?

    Oh and remember that evil printer I mentioned in August? It’s still up to it’s hi-jinks and hasn’t worked 2 consecutive days yet this year. Would I be farther along in my goals if it worked reliably? I fear we shall never know…