Display Ideas

Hello!

I hope you had a restful Thanksgiving vacation. I was happy to have my son and his new wife for a couple of days. We did not go shopping or do much of anything except enjoy each other’s company.

I don’t know if you do much in the way of display for your library. It is a good way to spotlight books that might not be normally used. I know that I have checked out books that were just placed on top of the shelf at my local public library, but if they had been in the stacks, I might not have discovered them.

I don’t want to put more on your plate then is necessary, but these ideas are rather simple, but can be powerful.

Idea 1: Set up a display that rotates around. Have each teacher choose 8 – 10 (or more) books from the school library that they enjoy or enjoyed reading as a child. Print out a sign with their picture on it that says something like “Mrs. Campbell’s Favorites”. Use a table or shelf to stand the books up. You are done. Leave these up for a couple of weeks, then change out for another teacher. When you are out of teachers, begin on the 8th graders. Now it is the cool thing to do. Remember that the books need to be from the school library so other children can check them out, too. Books from home do not belong in this display. This can last you for 8 – 10 weeks or more. If you are in a larger school, you can group the teachers into sections and have groups like “Books our 3rd and 4th grade teachers like” or “8th grade girls’ favorites”. You will come up with something that works. Also, once the display is going, all you need to do is to make a sign unless you have students that can help with that, too.

Idea 2: Many schools have something like ‘Student of the Week’. I encourage you to include the library in this. The student of the week can choose books that they like or books that support their hobbies or activities. Students can display the books for you, too. In fact, the student whose turn it is can be responsible for his or her own display. She or he can also bring display items to support their favorites. If a girl loves horses, she probably has some horse items that can be in display. A student who enjoys karate, can bring the clothing or belts, or even just photos of them participating. If you are worried about items ‘walking off’, then photos would be better.

Idea 3: Assign a small group of two or three students to find books on a particular subject. Students can either choose their subjects (with your approval) or you can have a list to choose from. Subject ideas might include: alphabet books, cookbooks, needlework, pets, books with red covers, adventure books, etc. You can find lists of topics online or even in your bulletin board books.

Idea 4: Pinterest has thousands of display ideas. The problem is choosing the ones you want.

Be sure to make it easy for YOU. In your other classroom displays, include books with everything you do. Just this simple thing is a subtle way to show the importance of books and reading.

Have a great week.

Audrey

Currently Reading
Secret Lives of the First Ladies (audio book) by Cormac O’Brien
The Complete Works of P. G. Wodehouse (I’m 31 % through on my Kindle)
The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata (Previewing for the library)
Never Say Die by Will Hobbs (Previewing for the library)
Clementine for Christmas (Previewing for the library)

Let There Be Music (Books)

Hello,
Karen Carlton is one of my readers and is currently teaching Music. She told me about her collection of books and I asked if I could share them with you. She graciously agreed, so here goes.
Karen’s collection is divided into four types of books. The titles of each section are my own.
People in Music: She has books about composers, including some books that tell the back story of particular songs and pieces. Books about the orchestra are also included in this section. Other songbooks are probably included in this section, too.

Specific Classical Songs: In this section are included specific songs such as Peter and the Wolf, The Carnival of the Animals, and others like that.

Individual Songs: Many times an entire book is comprised of one song. I’m a Little Teacup, How Much is That Doggy in the Window?, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly are all songs and also have books about them.

Music Stories: Max Lucado has a story about The Song of the King, also other authors have written Do You Digeridoo, and Max Has Two Sticks.

I also suggested that Karen purchase the companion to the SDA hymnal that has information and stories about the hymns we sing each week. There are other sources of hymn stories available, also.
Children like to sing and sign the lyrics in sign language. There are a few books with simple signs to accompany songs. This makes a song that is sung especially lovely. If you don’t know sign language, check in your community for someone who can come and teach the signs to your children. It is good for the children, good PR for the school and fun besides. It is a fairly simple thing to do and really impresses the parents.

Have a wonderful week! Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
Audrey


Currently Reading
Secret Lives of the First Ladies (audio book) by Cormac O’Brien
The Complete Works of P. G. Wodehouse (I’m 31 % through on my Kindle)
The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata (Previewing for the library)
Never Say Die by Will Hobbs (Previewing for the library)
Clementine for Christmas (Previewing for the library)

Cataloging books in a set or series

Hello,

This week I want to discuss an option in cataloguing. Sometimes we buy a set or series of books and when we begin to catalog them, we notice that there are multiple authors. Some of the sets that immediately come to mind are the Dear America diary books, the American Girl sets, and the Adventist Girl sets. Each of the American Girl and the Adventist Girl sets have one author, but if we catalogued them by author, they would not be near each other on the shelf. In the Adventist Girl books, the ones by Sandy Zaugg would be at the end of the 813s while the ones by Jean Boonstra would be near the beginning of the 813s.

Most of the students that look for these books may not find the other sets quickly or easily. It really makes more sense to shelve them all together. Since they all have different authors, we decided to put them all together and instead of using the author’s name, we used ‘American Girl’ as the author. For the Adventist Girl books, you can use ‘Adventist Girl’ as the author.

Sometimes we have bought books that started out with one author or editor such as the Guide’s Greatest stories. Each story in the book has a different author, so we used the editor’s name as the author. At the beginning, Lori Peckham was the editor, so they started out with using ‘Lori Peckham’ as the author. However, as they progressed, the editor changed a couple of times. Since we wanted them all to stay together on the shelf, we continued using ‘Peckham’ instead of the new editor.

I have bought science books that have been printed and bound so they are sets, but the subjects may not be similar. A recent set that I bought was titled Great Achievements in Engineering. Individual titles included Mechanical Engineering by Christ Eboch, Biological Engineering by Melissa Abramaovitz, Environmental Engineering by Carol Hand, Aerospace Engineering by Angie Smibert, Civil Engineering by L. E. Carmichael, and Electrical Engineering by Jennifer Swanson. Each of these books has a particular area of engineering and according to Dewey, they would be individually located throughout the 600s. My options were to either put them in the proper place along with other books that had a similar subject. I could put the Aerospace book with the other aerospace books and so forth. Or I could keep them all together on the shelf together and use a generic engineering Dewey number for them all.

I decided to put the engineering books in the proper places with different Dewey numbers. They are all in the 600s so they aren’t too far from each other even though they aren’t shelved together on the shelf as a set. Someone else might want to keep them together and that is fine, also.

How do I decide which option to do for this? I think of how the books might be used by our students. Will they want to read these as a set? Can each book stand individually? How thick or thin are the books? Thin books can get lost between thicker books, so a thin set might be better shelved together in order to be noticed. I have a set of about 18 thin books on spies and spying, that work nicely all shelved together. Students find them easily and they are used often.

With the engineering books, I decided that the students would more likely choose them because of the subject matter and would find them individually because they are looking for the particular subject rather than a set of engineering books.

My main point is to help you make your library useful to your patrons. Make it easy for them to find the books they need.

I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

Currently Reading
Secret Lives of the First Ladies (audio book) by Cormac O’Brien
The Complete Works of P. G. Wodehouse (I’m 30 % through on my Kindle)
Mary Arden by Grace Livingston Hill
The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart (previewing for the library)

Dewey Decimal Game

Hello,

I know that teaching the Dewey Decimal System is probably not on your top three things to teach this year. However, you may have students that could learn to shelve books and be a help to you.
I have mentioned that I have a Library Club. The members of my Library Club give up two lunch recesses each week to come and work in the library. They shelve the books they have learned to shelve, straighten the books on the shelves, dust in the library, pick up trash, help with displays, and help with anything that I need them to do. I begin teaching them to shelve books by using small cards with Dewey numbers on them. They put the cards in order and I check for accuracy. If there is a problem, I tell them that they have made a mistake and they look for it. When one set of cards is complete correctly, they go on to another set of cards. I have about ten sets of cards with increasing difficulty.

I have some students that have completed all the cards and are now shelving books. When a student shelves a book, she shelves the book with the spine facing up and sticking out a bit and she slips in a marker beside the book with her name on it. One of us checks the book and we know how well the Library Club member is doing with shelving.

One more thing I will start doing is to have them work on a Dewey Decimal Shelving game that is online. You can search the internet for ‘order in the library’ or ‘dewey decimal shelving game’. Students click ‘Play’ and sign in with their name. If you are concerned that they have their name online, they can use just a first name or a fake name. Progress isn’t saved, so I made a bookmark for my girls to use as they complete each section. It actually gets fairly difficult in the last few levels, so is a challenge for most students.

Students can do this game from home or in spare time at school. If others see them working on this, they might also want to ‘play’ and the more people you have that have a basic knowledge of shelving, the fewer mistakes you will have in the library.

I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

Books from Home or Not?

Hello,

I occasionally get someone asking me what to do when students bring books from home to read for school assignments or even just for personal pleasure. Many of the books might not be appropriate for our schools. The question is “Should we allow them to bring these books to school or not?”

I have struggled with this question myself. On the one hand, I want to rejoice that they are reading and enjoying it! On the other hand, those books would bring much criticism if they were available in the school library.

Here’s how I have answered this dilemma for myself. If a student brings inappropriate material to the school to read, I talk to them privately and ask that they take it home and not bring it to school. I do not criticize them for reading the book. I tell them that that particular book is not appropriate for our school and if they want to read it at home and their parents don’t mind, that is fine. But here at school, there are many parents that do not want their children to read that type of book, and if those parents see the book here or hear about someone reading it here, they would be upset. Then I help them find a book to read at school from the library.

We also have students here who don’t check out books for their book reports and tell the teacher that they have a book at home they are reading. Most of our teachers have these students bring the book from home so it can be approved first.

So, what can you do if a student DOES bring a book from home? How do you know if it is appropriate or not? If I see a cover that looks like witches, vampires, or fantasy, I will just ask the child what the book is about. It may be that the publisher has put a wild cover on a perfectly good nonfiction book to attract the child. I see this often at our Scholastic Book Fair. Another child brought in a book to me with a fantastical cover but told me that he thought I should buy the book for the library. It deals with Christian and biblical themes. I bought a used copy to read and make my decision. Since it has a cover that might bring on criticism, I will read it through before actually purchasing it for the library. The student might also let you borrow his copy to read while you make a decision about the book.

So, if I need to find out about a book, I have three places I go to get a quick overview for a book I am not familiar with.
1. I first go to Amazon.com and look the book up there. I can get a brief summary there.
2. Goodreads.com is also another place to find out what a book is about. There is a LOT of information there and you can spend a lot of time looking at book lists.
3. Commonsensemedia.org is a great place to go for information on books and tons of other media, also. Items are rated according to the age level it is appropriate for, and tells about the content. You can check to see if there is any bad language in a book and what it is, any sexual situations, drinking or smoking, and more. There is also a blog with posts about other things.
Today I got one titled “What Should Parents Know About Tumblr?” It is a great place to get information.

Nothing really takes the place of reading a book for yourself, but if you cannot, check with your parents and see if any of them are willing to preview books for you.

Here is the list of criteria that the NAD used for choosing books for Pathways. It might be helpful to use this if you need to.
1. SDA standards compromised
Jewelry in pictures, Dancing, Reference to meat, Playing chess and cards, dice
Use of “heck”, “crikey”, Reference to movies—Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Twilight
2. Creatures that never lived
Cave men, Millions of years ago, Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, monsters, vampires, occult
3. Promotion of other doctrines, false doctrines
Catholic saints, Reference to pope, State of the dead
4. Fables and Fairy tales
Fable, fairy tales, Giant stepping over cars, Tall tales such as Paul Bunyan, Halloween, Magician in picture, Native America legends
5. Animal personification
Animals dressed, Children make up stories about talking animals,
Mouse covering ears, drawing, Story told from dog’s viewpoint, Steam coming out of ears, Winnie the Pooh on bulletin board

These could easily be teachable moments.
History of music mentions jazz, hip hop, rock, Sting, etc. – used as history lesson
Secular activities on Sabbath -
Child lies – child should be caught and punished

I hope this information is helpful to you. Have a great week.

Audrey

Currently reading:
A Life Inspired: C. S. Lewis biography by Christopher Gordon
Secret Lives of the First Ladies (audio book) by Cormac O’Brien
The Complete Works of P. G. Wodehouse (I’m 30% through on my Kindle)
Cold War on Maplewood Street by Gayle Rosengren (previewing this for the library. So far it is really good!)