More Library Programming
This year we've had the opportunity to do a lot of programming in our LMC during the school day, when students with passing grades can choose where they'd like to go. Some of our programming has been a big hit with 125+ students attending, some of it has been a miserable failure (as in, we couldn't get anyone interested no matter how we promoted it). This is an accounting of most of the programming we've done outside of what we typically view as our 'normal' mission. In other words, this doesn't include any of our book displays or contests, or any of the themed weeks that everyone else probably does (Teen Read Week, Banned Books Week, homecoming-themed weeks), or the traditional lessons we teach during the school day.
Our during-the-day programming runs 25 to 35 minutes three days a week, starting just after 10 A.M.
Our during-the-day programming runs 25 to 35 minutes three days a week, starting just after 10 A.M.
Anime Club: Our anime club typically meets once a month after school, but as we started rolling out during-school programming, Anime club members asked for additional meetings. This helps students who can't stay after school because they don't have rides or they're involved in other activities still be a part of the club. In a given month we'll now meet once after school, once during school, and the anime club leaders also meet once a month to plan out what they're doing during the meetings.
Book Club: This is one of our during-the-day failures. Based on the results of student surveys, we added more frequent book club meetings after school and also added once-a-month meetings during the school day. The after school meetings are typically well attended, the ones during the school day haven't caught on. Most book club members are heavily involved in other activities, and have said that they're using our during-school activity time to keep up with their other activities. Therefore, we've dropped most of our book club programming during the day.
*10 Great New YA titles for the holidays: A book talk during a time when we weren't getting to see many classes about independent reading.
*ACT Resources in the LMC: we noticed a lot of our ACT resources weren't getting circulated, so we hosted this session several different times. We mentioned print books, eBooks, and online practice tests students can access through the LMC databases.
*Holiday recipes from the LMC's cookbook collection: This is one of several themed cooking demos we did in the LMC. These are our most-attended sessions. No surprise; free food!
*Gateway Award Books: We offered this session several times, highlighting all 15 of a specific year's nominated books. There are 15 YA books nominated each year through the Missouri Association of School Librarians.
*Citelighter Research app: An online tool to help with student research.
*Annotary Research app: An online tool to help with student research.
*Scribble Research app: An online tool to help with student research.
*DIY touch-screen gloves. There is an earlier blog post about this session.
*College books: finding the right college, writing the best essay to get in!
*Brand new YA on Overdrive and in print: A fast-paced book talk over all sorts of new books just published. It helps that several of the titles were available on NetGalley, so the librarian could read them prior to publication and reliably talk about and promote them right as they were published.
*20 years of great novels: For our 20th year as a school, we've had several "20 great books" sessions planned. For this one, we pulled one or more great books published each year since the school opened in 1995.
*Non-fiction that reads like fiction. The title says it all. Featured books included Destiny of the Republic, Miracle in the Andes, Devil in the White City, Game six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series, and Long Way Gone, plus a number of other great non-fiction books.
*Valentine's Cooking Demo. See the earlier post about this with quite a few pictures!
*Spring Break Cooking Demo, featuring a student chef highlighting Irish cuisine
*DIY Auto Repair & Maintenance: an LMC lesson on how to change your own oil, check your tire pressure, and keep your car running well! Featuring a number of auto books and resources available in the LMC's collection.
*Got the travel bug? Get a travel book. We've got a lot of students who travel to a lot of places, and we've got a lot of travel books about a lot of great destinations. This was an attempt to get those two things together! Unfortunately, only a couple kids showed up. But I had fun pulling all the books and looking through them to prepare! It also highlighted for me that many of our travel books are dated and need newer, Internet-age editions.
*Baseball is back! We've got this session twice: once at the start of spring training, once just after the home opener here in Kansas City. It includes non-fiction books about the negro leagues, the women's professional league, great MLB teams of the past, and biographies. The presentation highlights many great fiction novels that incorporate baseball somehow, from The Art of Fielding where baseball is pivotal to the plot, to Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon or John Grisham's Calico Joe where baseball is part of the story but not the whole story.
*March Madness Basketball: Like the baseball offerings, and at about the same time of year, we offered a selection of basketball related fiction and non-fiction. Some favorites include Pat Conroy's My Losing Season, When March Went Mad, and novels Black and White and The Perfect Shot.
*Soundzabound Music Library: We have a site license for this digital music library that isn't often used outside of our Mac production labs. This session highlighted how to get to it and download copyright/royalty free music.
*Irish Celebration: Approaching St. Patrick's Day we offered a wide range of Irish books, including the poetry of Seamus Heaney, novels of Siobhan Dowd, biographies by Frank McCourt, and plenty of Irish histories and photo books. If only we had a bagpiper to go with them! Or U2, for that matter.
*LGBTQ Novels in the LMC. We're co-hosting with the Gay Straight Alliance. A presentation of books with LGBTQ characters and a short history of how the subject has gone from getting a book banned (Annie on my Mind was pulled from shelves in our district) to being so common as to not be noticed (the list of YA novels with LGBTQ characters published in the last few years is staggering).
*Guys Read: Our picks for books that appeal to guys, especially those too cool to read a book. Favorite picks: I Am the Weapon by Allen Zadoff, Swim the Fly and sequels by Don Calame, Winger by Alex Smith, Boy 21 by Andrew Quick, Proxy by Alex London, Thirteen Days to Midnight by Patrick Carmen.
*Funny Books for April Fool's Day: both joke books and books that are just plain funny.
*Plant a Garden: gardening resources in the LMC in print and online (eBooks, eMagazines, etc)
*Earth Day celebration
*Cooking Demo with student chefs: Tax Day Edition! A collaboration with our culinary team to get student chefs on stage to highlight recipes from our cookbooks, eBooks, and eMagazines.
*Shakespearean Insult Competition: Thou art a knave! This tribute to the Bard and his birthday/deathday, we give students a list of Shakespeare's best insults and let them have at it.
*Where's Waldo? Our LMC features a spectacular second floor view where you can a hundred square miles. The idea here is we'll station a few Waldos outside-- in the parking lot, over at the police station across the street, at Backyard Burgers across the other street.... and let students play Where's Waldo? This one is slated for very late in the school year when we're all a little burned out and need a bit of fun. There are even three Waldos in the promo poster (the panoramic photo is a partial view -- maybe a third -- of what we see out the big LMC windows).
*May Day: We probably won't have a may pole, but we might. No surprise-- this is slated for May 1.
*Cinco De Mayo: our final cooking demo of the year.
 |
| The Anime Club, or half of it. The after-school group got so large we had to move out of the library meeting room to the larger-capacity lecture hall. The during-the-day meetings are still in this room due to scheduling. |
Book Club: This is one of our during-the-day failures. Based on the results of student surveys, we added more frequent book club meetings after school and also added once-a-month meetings during the school day. The after school meetings are typically well attended, the ones during the school day haven't caught on. Most book club members are heavily involved in other activities, and have said that they're using our during-school activity time to keep up with their other activities. Therefore, we've dropped most of our book club programming during the day.
*10 Great New YA titles for the holidays: A book talk during a time when we weren't getting to see many classes about independent reading.
*ACT Resources in the LMC: we noticed a lot of our ACT resources weren't getting circulated, so we hosted this session several different times. We mentioned print books, eBooks, and online practice tests students can access through the LMC databases.
*Holiday recipes from the LMC's cookbook collection: This is one of several themed cooking demos we did in the LMC. These are our most-attended sessions. No surprise; free food!
 |
| For each recipe in the cooking demo, we listed the ingredients on one card and showed where we pulled the recipe. These cookies came from our online Zinio subscription for Food Network Magazine, available to the first 2500 students to download it. |
*Gateway Award Books: We offered this session several times, highlighting all 15 of a specific year's nominated books. There are 15 YA books nominated each year through the Missouri Association of School Librarians.
*Citelighter Research app: An online tool to help with student research.
*Annotary Research app: An online tool to help with student research.
*Scribble Research app: An online tool to help with student research.
*DIY touch-screen gloves. There is an earlier blog post about this session.
*College books: finding the right college, writing the best essay to get in!
*Brand new YA on Overdrive and in print: A fast-paced book talk over all sorts of new books just published. It helps that several of the titles were available on NetGalley, so the librarian could read them prior to publication and reliably talk about and promote them right as they were published.
*20 years of great novels: For our 20th year as a school, we've had several "20 great books" sessions planned. For this one, we pulled one or more great books published each year since the school opened in 1995.
*Non-fiction that reads like fiction. The title says it all. Featured books included Destiny of the Republic, Miracle in the Andes, Devil in the White City, Game six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series, and Long Way Gone, plus a number of other great non-fiction books.
*Valentine's Cooking Demo. See the earlier post about this with quite a few pictures!
*Spring Break Cooking Demo, featuring a student chef highlighting Irish cuisine
 |
| Sophomore Bishop Smith discusses his Irish menu with about 100 students during a cooking demo in the LSNHS LMC March 11, 2015. |
*DIY Auto Repair & Maintenance: an LMC lesson on how to change your own oil, check your tire pressure, and keep your car running well! Featuring a number of auto books and resources available in the LMC's collection.
*Got the travel bug? Get a travel book. We've got a lot of students who travel to a lot of places, and we've got a lot of travel books about a lot of great destinations. This was an attempt to get those two things together! Unfortunately, only a couple kids showed up. But I had fun pulling all the books and looking through them to prepare! It also highlighted for me that many of our travel books are dated and need newer, Internet-age editions.
*Baseball is back! We've got this session twice: once at the start of spring training, once just after the home opener here in Kansas City. It includes non-fiction books about the negro leagues, the women's professional league, great MLB teams of the past, and biographies. The presentation highlights many great fiction novels that incorporate baseball somehow, from The Art of Fielding where baseball is pivotal to the plot, to Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon or John Grisham's Calico Joe where baseball is part of the story but not the whole story.
*March Madness Basketball: Like the baseball offerings, and at about the same time of year, we offered a selection of basketball related fiction and non-fiction. Some favorites include Pat Conroy's My Losing Season, When March Went Mad, and novels Black and White and The Perfect Shot.
*Soundzabound Music Library: We have a site license for this digital music library that isn't often used outside of our Mac production labs. This session highlighted how to get to it and download copyright/royalty free music.
*Irish Celebration: Approaching St. Patrick's Day we offered a wide range of Irish books, including the poetry of Seamus Heaney, novels of Siobhan Dowd, biographies by Frank McCourt, and plenty of Irish histories and photo books. If only we had a bagpiper to go with them! Or U2, for that matter.
*LGBTQ Novels in the LMC. We're co-hosting with the Gay Straight Alliance. A presentation of books with LGBTQ characters and a short history of how the subject has gone from getting a book banned (Annie on my Mind was pulled from shelves in our district) to being so common as to not be noticed (the list of YA novels with LGBTQ characters published in the last few years is staggering).
*Guys Read: Our picks for books that appeal to guys, especially those too cool to read a book. Favorite picks: I Am the Weapon by Allen Zadoff, Swim the Fly and sequels by Don Calame, Winger by Alex Smith, Boy 21 by Andrew Quick, Proxy by Alex London, Thirteen Days to Midnight by Patrick Carmen.
*Funny Books for April Fool's Day: both joke books and books that are just plain funny.
*Plant a Garden: gardening resources in the LMC in print and online (eBooks, eMagazines, etc)
*Earth Day celebration
*Cooking Demo with student chefs: Tax Day Edition! A collaboration with our culinary team to get student chefs on stage to highlight recipes from our cookbooks, eBooks, and eMagazines.
*Shakespearean Insult Competition: Thou art a knave! This tribute to the Bard and his birthday/deathday, we give students a list of Shakespeare's best insults and let them have at it.
*Where's Waldo? Our LMC features a spectacular second floor view where you can a hundred square miles. The idea here is we'll station a few Waldos outside-- in the parking lot, over at the police station across the street, at Backyard Burgers across the other street.... and let students play Where's Waldo? This one is slated for very late in the school year when we're all a little burned out and need a bit of fun. There are even three Waldos in the promo poster (the panoramic photo is a partial view -- maybe a third -- of what we see out the big LMC windows).
*May Day: We probably won't have a may pole, but we might. No surprise-- this is slated for May 1.
*Cinco De Mayo: our final cooking demo of the year.
Comments
Post a Comment