SLG Regional Event, Oakham School, November 2016

Due to appalling traffic in Huntingdonshire on Tuesday November 1 2016, I missed the first presentation at this event at Oakham School in Rutland.

Luckily, I managed to arrive in time for Karen Benoy's interesting talk about Using data to track reading in KS3 at Thomas Alleyne Academy.  Based on Adam Lancaster's ideas, Karen discussed developing a tool to collect data on children's reading age, aptitude and enthusiasm for reading: enabling teachers and librarians to intervene when those children are unable to progress. Attitude to reading surveys are run twice a year and Year 7 are asked what/where they read; their favourite genres; the types of reading material used; their use of libraries; their attendance at book or author events; whether they love or hate reading. Online assessment tests are used to generate comprehensive data on reading ability and this data is added to SIMS. In library lessons the data is used to seat readers with non-readers and reader intervention records are used to record data. The data collection and interpretation did look time consuming, and librarians would need to be sure that such a strategy was appropriate for their school before implementing a similar scheme. However, the interventions do seem to be working at Karen's school, with a clear difference in children's reading post-intervention.

I was intrigued by the "Read to Succeed" Week initiated by Claire Scothern at Trent College. It took a year to organise and involved lots of different authors talking to different pupils from different year groups. Some did a book talk, others offered writing workshops. There was even a "come dressed as your favourite book character" day. Claire admitted that such a large event can create problems, not least due to the amount of visiting speakers who needed to be booked in advance; the possibility of cancellations; the cost of booking the authors; the logistics of enabling pupils to be out of lessons to attend author talks. In the future, the week may be three days instead of five, with each day being for a specific year group, to reduce the pressure on the timetable. I am always amazed when librarians organise these large events - they are very time consuming and require a lot of energy, drive and creativity, but it looked like a great success.

Next, Darryl Toerien from Oakham School discussed Curriculum Mapping, a strategy for joining up academic departments with library resources. It enables libraries to ensure that they know what is being taught when and to whom.  Not all departments offer detailed schemes of work for topics; thematic line of enquiry and learning objectives are not always clear, and some subjects do not combine topics into units. Few schemes include resource lists or resources for further inquiry. Darryl's software enables library staff to see what is being taught at a given part of the year and make links with other areas of the curriculum which may be teaching a related topic. Use of the library for research on these topics can then be built into the curriculum/timetable.

After lunch we were able to explore the online resources subscribed to by Oakham School Library, then Sophie Fisher from the Stephen Perse Foundation talked about her interest in Diversity in Picture Books. Sophie researched this area for her Masters degree and discovered that it is difficult to discover which picture books cover LGBT+ issues as a public library user due to poor keywording, low stock levels and supplier-led stock selection. A straw poll of librarians in the room indicated that diversity in school library fiction is better, possibly due to expert librarians selecting books from specialist suppliers such as Letterbox or Stonewall. I feel pretty comfortable in my selections of LGBT+ fiction - it is becoming more mainstream and accessible and I think teenagers are less stigmatised through reading what may in the past have been disparaged by their peers as "a gay book."

Next up was my presentation, more on which here.

Lastly, Alison Tarrant from Cambourne Village College talked about embedding information literacy within the curriculum through research projects in KS3. Having set up the library at CVC, Alison is well placed to initiate new methods of teaching information skills. Using the Stripling model of Inquiry pupils were encouraged to follow the steps to add more depth to their research. In the study, teaching sets were split into those receiving librarian help via personal instruction, those receiving help via an instruction sheet and those with no help at all. Groups receiving librarian help achieved more and with less contact time than the other groups,as they did more work independently. It seems that embedding research skills in the task can improve student outcomes: they will use multiple sources and are encouraged to think deeper about the subject and about how to complete the task. Greater engagement with the librarian increases pupil confidence, although any worksheets given out need to be given at the start of the project to avoid resentment about extra work. It will be interesting to see whether similar results are achieved with future year groups and different subjects in the future.

All in all, an interesting and informative day. It was nice to meet some school librarians I hadn't met before and to have a chat with them about their libraries. Thanks to Darryl and his team for hosting.

TeachMeet East : Tools and tips for teaching

CILIP East held a TeachMeet on Saturday 9 July 2016 at the Chelmsford Campus of Anglia Ruskin University. This free event was open to all librarians with an interest in sharing their teaching experiences.

Overall, it was an interesting experience,with the Anglia Ruskin librarians sharing some of the ideas they discovered at LILAC (Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference) and the Health Libraries Conference.

Gamification was a big theme, demonstrating that information skills can be taught in a fun and engaging way. I particularly liked the competitive aspect of the question hunt, which would appeal to children in years 7-9.

Also the fact or fiction cards would be a good way of debunking myths and evaluating information sources with older pupils, perhaps in the sixth form.

There is no denying that these lessons are far more engaging than the traditional stand in front of the class and give them lots of information lessons that we are more used to offering. They also require much more initial preparation and a higher level of creativity.

However, once the initial work is done, they offer a more enjoyable lesson to deliver, and possibly one that children will enjoy more, and perhaps they may even retain more of the information through being taught this way.

I felt that many of the participants were novice teacher-librarians, looking to pick up some info on how to teach. I wanted to talk to others about their teaching styles, and what techniques they used when offering inductions to new users: it seems that we are most of us stuck in a rut - offering the same teaching materials because we are conscious that we only get a short period of time in which to give them everything they need. This makes inductions dull for us and dull for our users.

It is very hard to change, but if we do it bit by bit, we could make these sessions fun for everyone,

Utilising iPads in Library lessons

For several years, the Library has been running information and library skills for all year groups, but especially for years 7 and 8, to introduce them to, for example, how the library is laid out, what Dewey Decimal Classification is, how to search the catalogue effectively.

One of these sessions has always been the Reading Game. We have been using the preprinted sheets from Carel Press to do this activity, which introduces pupils to different genres and books from our fiction library. Now that all pupils have iPads, we thought we would try and use the available technology to make the game more up to date for the app generation.

We are fortunate in having a lovely Learning Technologist who was able to come up with a few different apps which might achieve our purpose, and once we got over the idea that we had to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same format, looking exactly the same, but online, we decided to use Evernote, an app that I had come across many years ago, but never really had the need to use.

So essentially, when you pick apart the activity, each pupil is assigned a different genre. They have to look at the four provided books for that genre and decide which of these has:

• the best blurb
• the best start
• the best cover

Using Evernote, they need to record their decisions.

The advantage with Evernote is the ability to create a Notebook in which to store differently named Notes. So they created a Notebook called Reading Game, in which they created a Note for each genre they encountered. In each note, they type in which book title has the best blurb and which has the best start, then they take a photo of the best cover to embed in the note,

The advantage of using the iPads over the printed sheets is that pupils have their iPads with them all the time, for use in lessons, whereas the printed sheets were kept in the library and often never looked at again. So when it comes to revisiting the information, it is much more accessible and usable than before.

We recently introduced year 7 to Passport to Reading, which is our school reading challenge. They have to read 6 books in different genres and record what they have read, with a short review, in a booklet. Once the booklet is completed, they receive a certificate and can move up to the next level. Each level gets progressively harder, with pupils needing to read 6, then 9, then 12, books from 6 different genres in levels 1-3, then in level 4 to read 6 books in a chosen genre and, at level 5, to read 6 books from specified genres. In total, pupils who complete the challenge have read 39 books - in 2 years.

Now that the Reading Game diaries are stored on the pupils' iPads, pupils can check the genre Notes to give them an idea what to read in each category - they can choose to read a book they liked during the activity, and it helps to reinforce what is different about the genres.

Of course, we could use the iPads for the Passport to Reading as well, but each book recorded must be signed off by a teacher, librarian, parent or guardian, so I think we'll stick with paper for now.

Library Skills in Schools

One of the things I really liked about working in higher education was teaching our library and research skills programme. You might think that school librarianship doesn't utilise these skills, but you'd be wrong. Our school enables pupils in the Lower Sixth (Year 12) to undertake an Independent Research Project (IRP) - as such, the Library teaches them how to research a subject effectively, how to avoid plagiarism and how to reference their source material. So far, so familiar.  This is all a preparation exercise for the skills they will need at university, and based on my experience in Higher Education, they desperately need to know these skills before they arrive on campus - it makes things so much easier.

So tomorrow I will be teaching a class of 11 Sixth Formers how to be honest in their academic work, by citing their sources and avoiding literary theft.

This is in contrast to the library skills sessions I taught last week with Year 7, where we covered research skills. They are starting to study Shakespeare and they had to answer eight questions on Shakespeare, Elizabethan history and the plays. The catch was that in their pairs one had to use a book, the other the internet to find the answer: a cunning ruse that shows them that the internet is not always quicker than a book in finding answers to very specific questions.

These lessons have all been taught before so the question sheets and resources were available ready for use... until we were informed that while one group was going to do Twelfth Night, as in previous years, the other would be studying A Midsummer Night's Dream... for which we had no questions.
So, quick look through the questions, two specifically Twelfth Night questions needed replacing. Now, I haven't read A Midsummer Night's Dream since I was a fairy in an outdoor production at the University of Leicester's Botanical Gardens (it rained - I had to miss the last performance and was ill for a week afterwards) and have only seen an amateur performance since (also outdoors; also wet) so my knowledge of the play was sketchy, at best.

Putting on my researcher's hat, I duly read the Connell Guide to A Midsummer Night's Dream and wrote two questions, found appropriate sources which Year 7 could use to find the answer, created new question sheets and a teaching sheet with all the answers for me, and duly waited for my victims class to arrive,

The thing I love about Year 7 is that they are enthusiastic, but also competitive. They soak up knowledge like sponges and always want to contribute vocally to lessons - there is never a shortage of raised hands from eager pupils desperate to give the answer.

Feedback from the English teachers was very positive:
"Thank you so much for this morning - a really useful and enjoyable exercise!" - Head of English

I led a fun, interesting skills session and I got to show off my Shakespeare knowledge.
Who says school librarianship is dull?