Falkirk Book Award

Falkirk Council’s book award called RED (Read, Enjoy, Debate) Book Award is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The shortlist is:

•  Beneath by Gill Arbuthnot 
•  Salvage by Keren David 
•  Mind Blind by Lari Don 
•  Inflicted by Ria Frances 

To celebrate the 10 years of RED they have 10 schools around the world shadowing the book award.

Books For Keeps

Books for Keeps is the UK’s leading, independent children’s book magazine.

They produce 6 issues a year and the latest issue (plus back issues) are available free online.

http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/

The School Library and Memes

Are a fun way of promoting the library, emphasising a point or raising awareness of a service.

Create your own over at http://www.memecreator.org/create

Or better yet get the pupils to do some for you.

Musings About Librarianship has an interesting article on them

ALT Survey

ALT would like you to do this survey to find out about the library provision in schools in the UK.  This is to tie in with a debate planned at ATL's annual conference in April about the shutting of school libraries. All responses to the survey will be anonymous unless you give your permission for your name to be used.

You do NOT have to be a member of ATL to answer it. It's very quick and easy to do and the last question asks if you are a member or not plus you don't have to leave any personal details either. The more people that respond then the better idea they will have of the situation regarding librarians and libraries within schools - so can I please urge you to take a few minutes and fill it in; especially if you're in a situation where you've had your hours cut, been downgraded or shoved into a small classroom somewhere!

The School Library & Youth Achievement Awards

Stromness Academy Library has a long history of providing structured activities for pupils to do in their leisure time (eg. Pupil Librarian Training, special events such as Poetry readings / story telling and Role-playing Games Activities) and now they can use these activities to work towards recognised qualifications in a pilot project which allows pupils to work towards a YouthAchievement Award. With the support of the Community Learning Officer (OIC), and Deputy Head Teacher, Frances Sinclair, the School Librarian took on the role of ‘Award Group Worker’ to oversee the pupils undertaking the award.

The YAA has four levels and each level provides an award equivalent to SQA qualifications for which pupils have to carry out a number of peer assessed challenges of their choice, producing a portfolio of evidence which can include photos of the activity, logbooks, diaries, witness observations, plans, records of attendance, certificates, to name but a few.

Bronze – takes part in activities: Four 15-hour challenges 

Silver – helps to organise activities: Six 15-hour challenges 

Gold -  plans, organises and leads activities: Seven 15-hour challenges

Platinum – takes on a leadership role: 135 hours participation 

The pupils discuss ideas with their peers and Award Group Worker and set out their own challenges and create a set of targets to achieve to complete the challenge. These awards are pupil led and they need to show responsibility and have the motivation to carryout the challenges and produce the evidence they need with minimal input from the Award Group Worker who acts in a supporting role.

The onus is on the pupil to collect their own evidence which can include photos, witness statements, evidence of time spent (eg. Logbooks), peer observations, certificates, course programmes, diary note, to name but a few. This evidence is then collated into a portfolio which is internally moderated by the Community Learning Officer giving pupils a chance to improve the portfolio prior to it being sent off for external moderation.

A number of pupils who regularly use the library, and/or are on the Pupil Librarian Training Scheme or do Role Playing Games for after school or Friday afternoon activity ‘signed up’ for the awards in 2010/11. Pupils devised their own challenges but most are using library based activities as their starting point, such as, for instance, working towards a Pupil Librarian certificate, or learning

 to play / take part Dungeons & Dragons game or Warhammer. These activities are well established in the ethos of the library provide a good starting point for these awards as well as other opportunities offered by the school. Pupils can also use other activities, such as their Hoy Outdoor Education experience or clubs, societies or sporting activities they are involved in out with school.

Being an Award Group Worker, on paper looks to be quite a simple task as the participants are supposed to be entirely responsible for their own progress and learning, but reality does mean that one has to ‘push’ pupils to remember to produce their evidence on an ongoing basis as well as organising peer group meetings and advising on the final portfolio production. There was a lot of work involved but the satisfaction of seeing pupils gain a recognised qualification (in part for work done in the library as a Pupil Librarian) is worth it.

 Frances Sinclair is the School Librarian at Stromness Academy

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of the SLA(S) newsletter.

Information Literacy Survey

This article from Kateri Wilson-Whalley originally appeared in 2013 Summer SLA(S) newsletter. Although the data is now four years old I am planning to do another survey and see if things have improved over that time.

In 2011/12 I’d noticed in my S2 Web vs. Book lesson that many of the pupils were taking 10 plus minutes to find information available on the front page of Google. S1 and S2 pupils regularly confused ‘Google’ as being the source of information plus I had an S5 pupil base an English essay on a single source – a known fake website.

So in spring 2012 I conducted a whole school survey via tutors. I asked all years the same 16 questions and then compared the results. 907 pupils responded. The questions asked about their awareness of library resources as well as their own internet use.

I felt that pupils didn’t remember what I told them if they didn’t use it regularly. So to check information retention I asked about the library catalogue. Despite every pupil being told in S1, only 51% of pupils remembered we had a catalogue. Unsurprisingly this is directly linked to me reminding them – S1 (seen fortnightly) 81% remember compared to S4 (no set classes) 27%.

5% of the pupils don’t have internet at home and of  those that do some commented that this was only occasionally or via a games console or similar.

74% have no rules on internet use at home, and as you’d expect the older the pupil the fewer who claimed parents/guardians imposed rules. Curiously parents of girls are twice as likely to have regular checks on what they get up to (1 in 5 girls said that what they looked at was regularly checked).

84% of pupils said they use the internet for homework (I’m not sure if 16% of pupils don’t do homework or if the homework being set doesn’t require research).

1/3 of boys use the internet for news compared to 1/5 of girls.

85% of the pupils use Facebook .

1 in 3 use Twitter – girls are twice as likely to than boys.

13% have their own blog.

89% watch YouTube or other videos.

7% have their own website (boys are twice as likely to have one than girls).

Only 4% download eBooks, though I expect this number will grow.

1 in 5 pupils often can’t find what they want online. There was no difference between male and female. However, age does affect pupil’s abilities with nearly 1/3 of S1 struggling to find information compared to just over 1 /10 of S6 (some of the S6 issue seem to be around finding academic resources).

2/3 of the pupils trust most of what they find online.

Less than ½ do any checks on a new website.

Only 1in 10 check who wrote a website.

Less than a 1/3 check the date or double check.

There is little difference between boys and girls. Though the girls were slightly more likely to double check, while the boys slightly more likely to check the date.

I felt these results backed up my observations from classes. The key point I felt was that 1 in 5 pupils can’t use the internet well enough to find what they want and only half the pupils are checking quality of this information and even the most basic way. Yet 84% of pupils use the internet for homework.

What concerns me is that the same skills are needed to book flights or buy clothes as to research academic papers. There are assumptions made about the ability of pupils to use the internet yet it’s clear that when the pupils reach us in S1 this isn’t a skill they already have and not all have it by S6.

The important question is what next? I gave a presentation of results to the whole staff at the start of this year. I revised my S5 Study Skills lessons (I do three annually) to reflect the skills they needed with more focus on locating and evaluating sites for research. I’ve also tried to develop the lessons I do with S1 and S2 so that these also cover and repeat the key points. Plus I’ve raised it with our whole school Literacy Committee.

I proposed that teachers:

•      Remind pupils how to search online regularly 
•      Place an emphasis on the reliability of the sources used.

•      Ask for a bibliography as part of research

I am also hoping that as a school we will create, or adopt, a universal reminder and use this throughout the school to reinforce the message.

The aim of the survey was to raise awareness of library resources and provide evidence to back up the observations I was making in class. The survey wasn’t perfect and it has left some unanswered questions but I think it was worthwhile. 

If you fancy conducting your own survey here are the questions I asked:

1. Do you ever come to the library outside of class time?

·         Daily

·         Weekly

·         Monthly

·         Couple of times a year

·         Never

2. Can you find books that you want easily? Yes/No

3. Do you have internet access at home? Yes/No

4. Do your parent/guardians make any rules about you using the internet?

·         No rules

·         Regular Checks

·         No Social Sites

·         Only approved websites

5. What do you use the internet for?

Homework/ News/ Twitter/ blogging/ Tumblr/ Shopping/ Music/ YouTube/ Your own website/ Facebook/ other social networking/ radio/ e-books/ other (please write site name)

Do you agree with these statements?

6. I often can’t find what I am looking for on the internet – yes/no

7. I trust most of what I find on the internet – yes/no

8. I am confident about using the internet – yes/no

9. When you use a website for the first time which of these would you do?

·         Check how up to date the information is

·         Check the information on other websites/ books/etc.

·         Check who created the website and why

·         None of these

·         I don’t go on new websites

10. Did you know you can find books in the library using the online library catalogue?  Yes / No

11.Do you use the JYHS Library Blog outside of class? Yes/No

12. Do ‘like’ JYHS Library on Facebook? Yes/No

13. Do ‘follow’ JYHS Library on Twitter? Yes/No

14. Do you follow the JYHS Library Tumblr blog? Yes/No

15. If you don’t do any of the above why not?

·         Didn’t know they existed

·         Don’t use these websites

·         Not Interested

·         Other (please explain)

16. Any other comments or suggestions on how to improve the library?

Kateri is the school librarian at The James Young High School