North Lanarkshire Council School Librarians

 

With all the recent recognition of the essential work carried out by school librarians in Scottish schools, including supporting the curriculum and health and wellbeing, providing a safe space for pupils, developing their digital and information literacy skills, and encouraging a love of reading, it is disappointing that North Lanarkshire Council are proceeding with their plans to cut these posts.

More information about the latest strategies in Scotland is available by clicking below:

How Good is Our School Library Framework

National Strategy: Vibrant Libraries, Thriving Schools

You can support school librarians in North Lanarkshire by signing the petition at https://www.change.org/p/save-school-librarians and check out their twitter feed at @SchLibrarianNLC

Virtual Meeting on Wednesday, 9th December 2020 at 4pm

SLA Scotland - Virtual Meeting 

Wednesday, 9th December 2020, 

4pm to 5:30pm 

The next meeting of the Scottish branch of the School Library Association will take place next Wednesday and will include our AGM. This meeting will be held online using the GoToMeeting platform (which will hopefully be accessible to everyone!)

Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, many of the activities we usually carry out in the school library to encourage reading are not possible - the library is being used for classes, gatherings are not permitted or are restricted to single year groups, making book groups and other events very difficult, and browsing for books is discouraged. This is an ideal opportunity to get together and share some ideas about how our school libraries are working during the pandemic.

The Scottish Book Trust have also agreed to talk to us about some of the activities they have seen school librarians carrying out to promote reading for pleasure. They will also pinpoint some of the resources from the First Minister's Reading Challenge that they think might be helpful.

For details on how to join the meeting, you can register on our Eventbrite page or email us at scotsla@gmail.com.

Book Week Scotland 2020

 

Book Week Scotland takes place this year from 16th to 22nd November. It will be very different this year, with many events taking place virtually. The Scottish Book Trust have released some resources which might be useful and there is a great programme of events listed on the website https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-scotland.

In schools, the current pandemic has curtailed many of the activities that would usually take place but we would love to hear what ideas you have for this year's Book Week Scotland.

Shadowing the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Award

If you plan to “shadow” the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards this year, register on their site by Friday (31st January) to receive a pack containing posters, bookmarks, stickers and activities to help you promote shadowing in your school. 

https://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/shadowing.php

There are usually some great books on the shortlist, which will be announced in March, and shadowing the judging is an excellent way for the pupils to engage with the books. It's also worth checking out the teaching notes and resources on the CKG site about the books.

Robert Burns Resources

The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

If your best-laid plans for Burns Night have 'gang aft agley', here are some last-minute ideas: 

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/: although this archive is no longer being updated, there are some great recordings and videos of the poems being read and sung by a variety of actors and artists available on this site. 

• https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/posters/: the Scottish Poetry Library has a good selection of posters to download and print (including Burns)

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ecc4wh:  Liz Lochhead's Authors Live event reading Burns and her own poetry

• https://www.bl.uk/people/robert-burns: links to articles and images of manuscripts and letters

• https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/topics/poetry: if your pupils are inspired by Burns, here are some fantastic poetry resources.

Please let us know about any other resources available.

Live Literature Applications now open

We all know that author visits can be inspirational for pupils and encourage them to read and write more. 
Applications are now open for Live Literature funding from the Scottish Book Trust for part-funded events taking place from April to December 2020. This is your chance to bring authors, storytellers, illustrators and more into your school library! More information is available by clicking here (https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-authors/live-literature/). 
Please note that applications close at noon on 22 January 2020.

Edinburgh Networking Meeting - SLIC

As mentioned in our last blog, Louise Cooper and Rob Westwood from the Scottish Library & Information Council came along to our Edinburgh Networking Meeting to talk about the work being carried out in relation to Scottish school libraries. 


SLIC has been instrumental in recent years in producing 'How Good is Our School Library?', which aims to support library staff and senior managers to evaluate the specific contributions the library makes to school improvement, and the National Strategy for School Libraries, 'Vibrant Libraries, Thriving Schools'. They also administer the School Library Improvement Fund, which has funded some excellent projects in school libraries across Scotland. We were delighted to learn from Louise that there will be a new round of SLIF funding in January so start thinking about those bids now!
Louise has also helped set up the 'Basecamp' forum for school librarians - this is a great resource and way to share information across the school librarian community. If you have not signed up yet, please contact Louise at l.cooper@scottishlibraries.org and she will add your name to the Basecamp group.
Rob has recently been appointed to SLIC to consider the creation of an information literacy toolkit for school librarians. He is currently reading through the results of the survey on the provision of information literacy in schools which many of us completed earlier this year and carrying out much research into this area. We are looking forward to seeing the creation of such a toolkit which will pull together many resources, especially as this is such a rapidly evolving area.
Thank you again to Louise and Rob for coming along.