Library

Sarah Moulton

2021 has been a big year for staff and students. Sadly we were unable to have students onsite to enjoy the library and books on offer for a big part of the year. This meant virtual library lessons and ebooks and audiobooks, and while we weren’t able to relax in the library with a book – students participated in their library lessons with great enthusiasm, and it was wonderful to still see their smiling faces every fortnight!

Book Week: For the second year in a row, Book Week was a virtual experience due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But this wasn’t going to stop the library staff from celebrating our favourite week of the year! We certainly missed seeing students dress up and get their picture taken in the photo booth and watching them try to conquer the escape room in record time. Instead, we had to settle for some online quizzes that Year 7 took part in with great enthusiasm – except for the dressing up as your favourite character, only Miss Moulton and Miss Moon took it to that level.

We had some great entries for the competitions: guess the book, match the book to the book world, match the book to the food, and take a pic of your pet with a book. It was great to see Year 7 really engage with the activities and talk about books with enjoyment. Hopefully next year we get to celebrate it together in our wonderful library.

Ms Moulton Book Week at Home Ms Moon

Library

Read With Me: Aimed at encouraging our boys to read for pleasure, the Read With Me program allows parents and carers to read alongside their son and share ideas, thoughts and have conversations about the book they have chosen to read together. We have had great feedback in the past about this experience and hope families enjoy it once again over the Christmas break.

Year 7 Library Lessons: Almost half of our library lessons this year have been done via home-based learning, which has been both challenging and rewarding! Year 7 have shown great resilience learning from home and have demonstrated their skills in cyber safety and awareness, creating video presentations and author talks, reading out loud with fluency, and creating book and film trailers. It has been great to hear about what books the boys are enjoying in lockdown, but it will be even better when we can hear about their reading adventures face to face!

The Reimagined Library: This year we have made some changes to the library to enhance the various learning spaces. In our senior study area we saw the return of the booths in order to encourage collaborative learning and our silent room was converted into another teaching space with the addition of some new technology, including the touchscreen television. We also added a breakout space for teaching space two so students have the opportunity to spread out and access alternative spaces when working in groups.

More recently, our reading area was moved to a quieter location and now students can read their book while taking in the beautiful vista of Brisbane Water. Another great addition to the library has been the television at the front entrance where students can catch the daily notices, latest releases, and current Lib-guides.

Lib-Guides: During home-based learning there has been high demand for the creation of libguides to support students with their research and accessing resources for their units of study. Thank you to all the teachers who work with the library staff to make this happen. The library have created lib-guides across almost all faculties this year and with over 15000 hits it is wonderful to see students accessing the abundance of online resources we have available.

ANZAC Display Reconciliation Week

Reading Awards Makey Makey

Reading Hour: In Week 10 of Term 3 we celebrated reading hour from the comfort of our own homes, encouraging both students and staff to take a break and enjoy simply reading for pleasure. It was great to see the boys enjoying their books at home and to know that even though we were feeling the effects of being stuck at home we could always escape for a little while to other places through reading!

Makey Makey: This year we started a new club in the library to encourage invention literacy. Using the Makey Makey tool we coded a game with which we could play with controllers using conductible objects like bananas, playdough, and graphite pencil drawings! To compliment the Solar System unit in science we also created an interactive diagram of the solar system and coded our drawings to provide recorded information when each planet was touched – they did a very impressive job!

Student Clubs: This year we had interest from students who wanted to run their own clubs in the library. These included technology club, Dungeons and Dragons, and Star Wars Club and were run completely by the students for the students. While it was short lived due to home based learning, there was a great turn out every week and we are looking forward to seeing them resume in 2022. Oliver Pringle was one of the students who led a club, Oliver commented ‘I started a Dungeons and Dragons club to find like-minded players. We had a small group which met on Mondays. I taught the rules of Dungeons and Dragons, how combat works, and how to make characters. I hope to do this in 2022, and play a game with my good friends.’

Staff: In September we were very excited to welcome the arrival of Mrs McArthur’s third son Joey! Sadly for the library (and in particular the fantasy readers) this means that Mrs McArthur will be enjoying parental leave with her wonderful family. However, it gives us the opportunity to welcome Miss Lucy Cullis to the role and we hope she enjoys her time here with us at St Edward’s Library. We hope supernatural fans will be happy to share their favourite genre with her. A massive thank you to the library team: Miss Moon, Miss Cullis, Mrs Butters, Mrs McArthur, Mrs McCarthy and Mrs Murray for their tireless dedication to making the library a safe and welcome place for all students. We look forward to what 2022 has to offer.