When maker spaces started popping up in school libraries, we were honest with ourselves and recognized that for our school, the 3D printer & other technological tools are best housed in our tech wing. In our Gr 9-12 library, we choose to offer a low-tech tinker table with space and supplies for hands-on activities that are often, but not always, crafts – for example, friendship bracelets, Spirograph, colouring pages, etc.
We aim to switch up the activity every week and try to be creative in terms of materials, repurposing wherever possible (one-sided abandoned print jobs, scraps of fabric). Our community is kind and generous, for example, digging out old Rainbow Looms from home when we had a recent request for that blast from the past.
What is fascinating and frustrating is our inability to predict the success of the activities. My colleague Viola is the mastermind behind the planning and scheduling and is often stymied in understanding why a particular activity didn’t gain interest or traction.
Here is an example of the wins, the perennial favourites:
Button-making
Large-scale sticky mosaics
Seasonal card-making
Perler beads (requires supervision of iron)
Here are some duds, activities that gathered dust and/or were pulled early due to lack of interest;
Origami (works in group instruction, not when left for self-direction)
Sketch a snowflake (too many instructions?)
Make & take in general (like to do it, don’t want to take it)
Tshirt bags (who knows)
It is clear that self-care projects are popular; we now know that make-your-own-lip balm will be a crowd scene and prepare accordingly. With the cold weather, we’re bringing back hand warmers (little bags of rice that can be microwaved). Soon we’ll be trying out school-tartan hair scrunchies using sewing machines generously donated by our Parents’ Guild.
We know that nostalgia plays a part – it definitely factors in when we put out the Lego. However, Playdough seems to fit that category but has been very hit-and-miss. Viola is on to something by thinking that it’s about getting the first penguin in the water; once a student sits down, they are often joined by another. Sometimes we’ll ask a library regular to get the party started; they’re always happy to help and it can generate some momentum.
Until we crack the code, we will keep throwing spaghetti at the wall!
Photo below is from Lunar New Year activities – fortunes and lucky red envelopes (with chocolate coins); note that the puzzle table is usually adjacent.
Last week, Matt Ball of Pace Academy sent a question out to our list about “Fun kits to check out.” Our library realized my dream of activity packs (named by my cooler colleagues: “Casti Library Action Packs,” or “CLAPs”) a few years back, and some back and forth on the thread suggested I should share some details here.
We find that the use of these packs fluctuates heavily in relationship to marketing and also school vacations, but we keep them going out of a commitment to outdoor and offline activities. I suspect that schools with elementary school students would have a much higher uptake.
My colleagues, Jole Seroff and Christina Appleberry, are spectacular at making things fun and engaging. I love the thematic papers they use! Students take a tag for the CLAP they want to check out and bring it to us at the circulation desk. We grab a pack for them.
We have five themes to our CLAPs at the moment, and the back of each check-out tag tells students what they will get with a given action pack:
In addition, these cards help everyone confirm that every item is there at both checkout and return.
Advancement gave us these cute knapsacks to hold our CLAPs. Each is tagged with a card showing the topic and a catalog bar code on one side.Each CLAP tag again lists the items we can all expect to find in the bag. It helps us remember what is in the bag at checkout and return, and assists students as they prepare to return the bag to us. As a result, we have experienced very little loss of materials, making these packs a relatively inexpensive endeavor. Sometimes, there is an invitation to engage in a communal activity with the CLAP. (Note our inflatable pillow is a lice-proofable material…..) The weaving and pompom kits include the choice of two colors of yarn. We bring students to this drawer to chose what they want. We have found our students to be responsible and return extra materials. In this drawer you can also see our extra looms, extra embroidery hoops, and the biggest investment from our CLAPs, Sashiko fabric with water soluble dots, by Olympus. Fun fact: you can also tell students are using these packs at school by the amount of artificial turf that has made its way into the yarn drawer!
While the CLAPs do not quite see the consistent use we would like, it gives us a lot of fun opportunities to connect with students, and also lets us extend active and passive programing (we had a stargazing event and we keep a simple loom warped and ready for us in the library) in a way that students can take with them.
Our larger loom, in between projects.
Examples of student watercolors of clouds. It took a while to get students to leave their images in, instead of ripping them out to hide them from others’ view, but we are starting developing a fun collection. Each one is dated, along with a location, type of cloud, and student name and grad year. It is really lovely to be building this visible history of relaxation within our community.We also had a student design badges that students can collect as they complete each action pack. (We also love our button-maker!)
I know that other libraries are out there running similar programs. Please feel free to share in comments, and link to pictures or other information that you have. I still fantasize about putting together local literary outings (or even for other cities) — maybe walking tours of places that appear in MG and YA literature, or activities similar to those noted in books. I’d love to have Go-Passes, as well, that students could check out to attend different museums. Right now, we don’t have the traffic needed to justify those purchases, but I have my eye on the future!
During a recent professional day, when we divided into interest groups, I joined teachers who wanted to talk about SEL. I was so touched when many of them told me that I did a lot for SEL through my low-stakes, brain-break library contests! I have always enjoyed contests, and I try to run one a month during the school year. Connecting them with books, reading, or writing, I use contests to leverage students’ creativity and writing skills in a fun way.
Everyone who enters my contests, whatever their skill level, earns intramural “Green or Gold” points for their efforts. At Overlake, all students are on one “team” or the other, and earn points all year through ASB activities, Field Day, and library contests. I love that my contests help quieter, maybe non-athletic students to shine and earn points for their team. Full disclosure: in addition to points, students also earn small prizes (water bottle stickers, lollipops, key chains, etc.) or one of my homemade cookies. I consider that a significant point of SEL, as well as an encouragement to flex their creative muscles! To pull the biggest possible participant pool, I run all my contests in the cafeteria during lunch. To determine winners, I cull the top 10-12 entries, and send them to faculty for voting.
I thought I’d write a two-part blog article to cover my contests, many of which originated with other librarians. I can’t run all of these in one year, so I alternate some of the less popular contests, and I’m always up to try a new contest as well. Please contact me if you’d like more information on any of these! I’ve listed them alphabetically, so here you have Bad Writing through Food Haiku.
Bad Writing Contest. This is an iteration of San Jose University’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges entrants “to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written.” I append the rule that kids’ sentences cannot gross me out, and must make sense. This is their favorite contest; they love the opportunity to write badly! As an example of how much a challenge it is, though, I’ve added a category for “accidentally great sentences,” since often I’ll encounter a sentence for a book I’d love to read!
2022 Winner: The sheep attacked my face like I was wearing a wool sweater and it wanted justice. —Diya M., 6th
2022 Accidentally Great Sentence Winner: If I can’t dream, am I allowed to live in this lightless city? —Rylie, 7th
Book Spine Poetry. This contest came from the library zeitgeist a few years ago—it’s a great one to run in April, as part of poetry month. My colleagues and I gather books with titles clearly visible on the spine, making sure we have some verbs, adverbs, etc. Having a cart of these available, I challenge students to “write” a poem using at least three books. I photograph the poem, as well as having students write it down so I know who created what verse.
2023 Winner: Meesha, 6th
Book Stacking. I borrowed this contest from a librarian at my last school, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. I have six boxes full of discarded books, and I challenge students to see how fast they can build a tower using all the books in two boxes. Stacks consist of one book laid flat on another book (no pyramids or books on their sides), and cannot wobble. Of course, the kids’ favorite part is knocking the stack down!
Book Title Snowman. This was formerly Book Title Hangman, which someone pointed out was not a good association for a kids’ game. For Snowman, I list twenty authors and titles that I hope kids will be familiar with, and turn them into forms with blanks. Because this contest requires a lot of input from those running it, I recruit student helpers. Kids guess letters and try to identify the author or title before their snowman is built.
Bookface. This activity was in the library zeitgeist a few years ago, when a lot of book covers featured partial faces or just parts of bodies. My colleagues and I amass a cart of books with such covers, and students choose a cover to be photographed with. As the trend in cover art has moved away from this type of cover, I haven’t run this activity recently.
Captions Contest. I could not do this contest without generous people who still get the local paper in print, and save their Sunday comics for me. Gathering these pages, I hold a lunch meeting before the contest, and ask students to cut out interesting comics panels and then trim out the speech bubbles. That leaves me with a pile of cartoons without captions, so the contest challenges students to write better, funnier captions. This is a colorful contest, when I post all of the entries around the library!
2021 Winner: Sammie, 8th
Clickbait. We all know what clickbait is—it promises amazing information with a tantalizing headline, but if you click, be prepared to be completely underwhelmed (and possibly infected by a computer virus). For this contest, I challenge students to come up with a great clickbait headline, as well as the less-than-thrilling truth behind it.
2021 Winner: OMG!!! TRAIN WENT THROUGH A MOUNTAIN!!! (There was a tunnel.) —Nidhir, 7th
Excuses, Excuses! To prepare for this contest, I take all of the entries from the prior writing contests of the year, and put them through a word frequency counter. I list and cut out the less common words, and students must draw three of these and use them to write an excuse about why they were late to school, or why their homework was late. For whatever reason, this contest inspires students to write mini-novels!
2022 Winner: Words: Mice, Moon, Foil. I’m really sorry that I’m late today, as when I woke up, I saw a bunch of giant mice surrounding me. I was obviously very terrified and tried to run away, but the mice all collectively grabbed me and put me in a spaceship that was made of foil or something, and sent me to the moon. I had to find my way off the moon but I made it, only six hours late! I brought some moon dust though, so please don’t mark me tardy. —Gloria, 8th
Food Haiku. What’s more inspiring than food? This contest challenges students to write a haiku about food. Over the years, I’ve tried alternate versions of this contest, like Book Review Haiku and Overlake Haiku, but food remains the most popular version!
2022 Winner:I love chocolate/Rich and dark and bittersweet/Like tasting a hug —Diya M., 6th
I want to reflect on our efforts to promote DEIBJ in our schools and ask for your input and suggestions.
I need to start by acknowledging my privilege. I am a white, cisgender, married, protestant woman. I come from an upper-middle-class family. Many things I enjoy now result from generations of accumulated wealth, much off the backs of marginalized groups. My school is built on land taken from the Anishinaabe Three Fires Confederacy, specifically the Odawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi peoples.
Recently, at school, we had an alarming post on social media. On the Monday before Spring Break, a 9th-grade boy thought it okay to post a video full of hate speech. The administration spoke with him and put him on disciplinary watch. On Wednesday of that week, the student posted a similar video.
Students, faculty, and academic staff gathered for an update on Thursday. The administration (President, Provost, DEI Director, and Residental life director) stood and addressed the issues. Afterward, they invited the students to the stage if they had any questions. Students began asking questions from the floor. It was my first time seeing students stand up for themselves in a DEI environment. I was thrilled for them and excited about what this could mean for our community.
After the break, we gathered again in a town-hall meeting, where all were encouraged to speak. Many students of all races, religions, and identities spoke out. We were so proud of their bravery.
For me, this incident has brought so much to the surface. You can substitute any marginalized group for the specific racial attack here. Am I doing enough? How does the library share marginalized groups’ struggles at our schools? This op-ed piece in the Detroit Free Press moved me. In it, Alemu says:
Solidarity means finding ways to relinquish the privilege that makes your whiteness inconsequential and my Blackness fatally consequential. Here I’m inspired by the words of the Australian Aborigine activist, Lilla Watson: “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Put another way, if you want to stand in solidarity with African Americans, then let it not be only because you want to save Black lives from our burden of oppression but rather because the consequences of your daily privilege on Black lives have become a burden you can no longer bear.
I have been a DEI advocate for many years. My collections have been through DEI audits, internal and external. My displays are varied, and my influence grows each week. Students appreciate my knowledge of our resources and see the library as a safe space.
I’m feeling a need for some fresh ideas to help make a difference here. So, how can we awaken our library approach to DEIBJ? Do you have any suggestions? Programs that have worked, ways to help our communities “see” into the issues, things that help raise awareness and spark conversations? Exciting ways to make inroads with your community?
School Library Programming is as unique as each librarian and learning community. One popular program in my suite is the Library Lunch Club(s).
I am on a fixed PK to Grade 5 schedule for just over 190 students. During the seven day rotation, I see PK for 30 minutes, K and 1 for 40 minutes per section and grades 2 through 5 for one hour per section. I also additionally schedule co-teaching and extra library time during research season. This schedule allows ample time for curriculum as well as reader’s advisory.
I have been offering Lunch Clubs since my first year here in 2017. I had an eager bunch of 5th graders that year – strong readers and active library users – this got me thinking about expanding programming.
Lunch Clubs were born! My schedule is such that offering 2 lunchtime clubs in the library during the 7 day rotation felt manageable.
Library Lunch Club:
Open to 4th and 5th grade students
2 lunch clubs offered each year, one per semester
No more than 10-12 students per, and only repeats if space allows
Themes (except for first year) are decided upon by my student leadership group year prior
Meet at least 8-10 times per semester, all semester long
Option to drop after first meeting, then committed for remainder
Eat lunch in the library or outside weather permitting for first half of lunch
Create, learn, enjoy library and literary activities during second half of lunch
Clubs offered so far:
Graphic Novel Club: appreciate the genre, create your own, pub in library
Picture Book Appreciation Club: appreciate the genre, create your own, pub in library
Newbery Club: Read Newbery winner and discuss book club style
Newspaper Club: appreciate the form and function, write your own and pub
Homemade Books Club: create accordion books and sew a handmade book together
I chose activities that I knew all of us would be able to dig into reasonably during the lunch hour. During all of these clubs, we talk books, laugh a lot, watch related videos, create original content and find community in our love for books, stories and sharing.
Graphic Novel sample 1Graphic Novel sample 2Shelf space for self-published work created during Lunch ClubsNewspaper Sample 1
Lunch Clubs are here to stay. I really enjoy providing a unique time and space to explore the books and topics they love, while they enjoy creative expression. Please share one of your unique library programs in the comments below!
When talking books with a group of seniors before winter break, one of the girls said, “My friends don’t think that I’m a reader, but I actually read all the time! It’s Fanfiction. They don’t think that counts, but it totally does! I read hundreds of pages a week, actually.”
Apparently, I have been living under a rock.
O.k. so maybe not completely under a rock. I have heard tale of certain infamous Twilight Fanfiction that came in various shades of…poorly written mega-bestselling material. But the Fanfic this student was referring to, and that of which her group of friends began passionately extolling on, was not about that business. It’s an entire world…a world made of fandoms. Have you seen sites like this?
They LOVE IT. In our five minute conversation, I heard about story lines inspired by characters from books, television series, and video games. I heard that some of it is poorly written, some is gratuitous R rated material that they deem me too young and innocent to read :), but according to these girls, some of it is really, really good (and addictive). They’re reading. A lot. And some of them are contributing their writing. I want to know more. Quite honestly, I want to know about what they’re reading, from comics to the Classics. If I try their suggestions, I feel like they will be more open to trying mine.
So, what to do?
Acknowledge it.
Discuss it as a community. If this group of five is this into it, who else can contribute to the conversation?
Encourage them to create some of their own?
After reading this School Library Journal Guest Post by Christopher Shamburg… When the Lit Hits the Fan in Teacher Education, I’ve decided to add a unit on Fanfiction this week in my senior English elective (I blogged about this class last year). However, I think it’s something that we could all do as librarians. Perhaps an all school program, a collaboration with your English department, a fun activity for your book club, or an after school activity?
Per Shamburg’s recommendation, I’ve done a bit of research into the history of Fanfiction. I can’t wait to talk to my students about Shakespeare in particular. And then there’s Fanfiction of biblical proportions. “Paradise Lost” anyone? This could (and is) an entire course at universities. Lacking a degree in literature, I know that will touch on the proverbial tip of the iceberg, but I think that it will be a fun way to engage with texts in a new way.
I’m looking forward to hearing what influences my students have noticed in works that they have read. I read March by Geraldine Brooks years ago and liked it, yet I didn’t know the word “Fanfiction” then. I just thought, “Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Little Women style”.
Think about these Fanfic writing prompts (offered again by Shamburg):
· Alternate Perspective—the story is told from the point of view of another character. For example, what would the Cinderella story be like if the stepmother told it? (Or maybe the father from Little Women?)
· Missing Scenes—scenes that are not in the original story, but would make sense in it.
· Alternate Universe—a major character or event in a story is changed, and a “What If…” scenario ensues.
· Alternate Realities—characters from one story enter the world of another story.
· Sequels—the story that happens after the original story.
· Prequels—the story before the original story.
· Self Insert—the story is rewritten with an avatar (representation of the author). For example, what would a Harry Potter adventure be like if you were in the story?
(Shamburg, 2008, 2009)
I’m going to ask them to choose one of the above scenarios, to adopt their author’s tone and writing style as much as possible, and to add a Fanfic chapter to their story. I might even ask them to weave together all four books that they read throughout the semester for a final creative writing exercise. How fun would that be ?!
Are any of you members of a Fandom that you’d care to share?
Is anyone doing anything with Fanfiction at school? If so, I would love to hear about it. Please use the comment section to share your ideas with us all!
