Nerdfighter Projects

With Project Rollercoaster nearing completion, our Nerdfighters have started to think about what they'd like to do next.  The main area of interest seems to be craft related, so the knitters have taken off their work again.  They've been training up our new Year 7 library regulars and the knitting box is a horrific mess, I mean, productive and creative hotbed of activity.  Yeah.

Our more experienced knitters are launching a range of mittens, knitted in our new house colours, to be sold to students across the school.  They start at £4 but can be customised with buttons and crochet flowers (thank you to Nicole in Year 10 for teaching me how to make these) for an extra couple of pounds.  The original plan was to raise money for charity, but they took me quietly aside and asked if instead they might be allowed to fund an author visit, which we'd had to cancel plans for after budget restrictions were felt a little too tightly.  After a brief moment of eye dabbing and awwwing, I of course agreed and they're now working on raising money to have Patrick Ness come and visit later in the year.  They really enjoyed his Twitter chat with us during Carnegie, so they would love to have him come and speak about his work.  His name is scrawled on the money box and the double entry book-keeping sheets they're keeping (yes, they're really doing it properly) is titled accordingly.

So if anyone wants any mittens, I know where you can get some great ones.

Welcome Back!

Term has begun and I'm delighted to report that we already have a fantastically enthusiastic new intake of Year 7s who have begun to colonise the library and make it their own. 

There's a lot coming up this term. 

• Open Evening.  Eugh.  Clean all the things! 
• Booked Up.  I'm so glad that the funding for Booked Up is still there.  Those in charge of grants and awards must be aware of how absolutely wonderful this is for our students, many of whom don't own books of their own, as well as how important a message this is.  Literacy is important.  Important enough that they want ALL students to own books.  
• Project Rollercoaster!  The research is well underway and we've set a deadline of 21st October, just before half term, for projects to be completed.  We're hoping to have a presentation afternoon, inviting parents and staff to share in the work that our Nerdfighters have been doing.  And then...  ALTON TOWERS. 
• NaNoWriMo - Project Rollercoaster wraps up just in time for us to launch this year's event!  It looks as though the uptake this year is going to be particularly impressive, in fact I'm quite worried that we just won't have enough computers.  The achievements of last year will be hard to top, but I think we can do it. 
• Christmas!  Yes, I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but still.  

There are also the inductions for the new Year 7s of course, and information literacy sessions with the new Year 12s. 

This year we're also running a school wide CPD course based on the Cambridge librarians 23 Things programme.  Over the course of 23 weeks, we'll look at research skills and new media, with a direct focus on how these things can be integrated into teaching and learning. 

Exciting times. 

Student Blog update

Following our very sucessful use of our student blog for Carnegie this year, we're not going to stop!  We'll now be shadowing the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, which is a fantastic set of eight books:

My Name is Mina by David Almond

Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton

Small Change for Stuart by Lissa Evans

Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge

Return to Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan

Moon Pie by Simon Mason

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher

Momentum by Saci Lloyd

This will be a much more independent project than the Carnegie, but we have a dedicated team who are already gathering their books together and reviewing! With the award stretching over the summer, there will also be the challenge of getting books to each other over the break, so we're going to trial use of an enbedded forum.  I'm still sorting through the security settings, but I'm hopeful that this will give them an ongoing point of contact during the break.  

Last Day of Term

Phew, we're finally here!  *flails, falls down*

It's been an exhausting last couple of days and I think we've all hit the burn out stage.  The rush on summer loans hasn't let up and there are huge gaps on all the shelves, but some of the faster readers who took out their stacks last week have already returned handfuls of books that they've finished, so if your book wasn't here earlier in the week, it may be here now!

Today is also a sad day as I'm saying goodbye to my form.  7NAd are no more!  I'd really hoped to carry on with them right up through the school,  but sadly this hasn't been possible (ggrrrr...) so it's quite upsetting.  But I hope they know that I will be their unofficial form tutor for as long as they're here.  Next year they'll become 8RWa, with Miss Way taking over.  She's a wonderful form tutor so I know they'll be well looked after, but I'll miss them horribly.

So, what's happening over the summer?

Those students who are taking part in shadowing The Guardian award will be posting their reviews over the summer on our student blog, so do take a look at what they think.

The Nerdfighters will continue their projects and continue the amazing research that they've already put so much time and energy into.  Some of the things they've discovered and learned about already has been really impressive.  Year 8 students have been putting the sixth form to shame with their knowledge of psychology.  We're going to have a fantastic collection of rollercoaster experts by the time this is all finished, and some of the ideas for their final pieces sound absolutely brilliant and so exciting!  

Some lucky folk are off to the Edinburgh book festival over the break, which I'm very jealous off, but I'm running away to the other side of the world to play with hobbits*, so I'm hoping that they will all bring back signed books and interesting news for us all.

Hope you all have a fantastic summer!  Read a lot, then come straight back up to the library when we're all back in September.



*I might not find hobbits but I will look carefully! Will also keep  my eyes open for worryingly attractive dwarves, though I do think Thorin looks a bit like a Klingon.

Counting Down the Days

Five to go.  Then summer.

All around the school, things have been winding down.  Not in the library though...  Here, spurred on by the extended loan period and increased allowances, students have been flocking to the issue desk with armfuls of books to take out over the summer. It's aces.  Friday was a particularly crazy one, with over 260 issues going out over the course of the day.  There are huge gaps on the shelves now, and it's not just the most popular reads that have been going out; there's been a lot of interest in the hidden gems too.

News of the new Cherub book by Robert Muchamore has been drawing a lot of attention, but I'm sorry folks, you'll have a bit of a wait for that yet!  We'll be getting a few copies in, but probably not as many as folks who've been asking for it.

And of course it's been a huge week for Harry Potter fans, with the release of HP7b.  There were some interesting discussions about spoilers on Twitter and other sites, resulting in a determination that you can't claim to have had a plot spoiled if the narrative came straight from a best selling book that's been out for several years and that if you haven't read it, then you're not a big enough fan to justify your irritation.  Fair play.  

The other exciting news of this week is that we've taken receipt of our first library Kindle! Now, I must confess that I'm not a fan of them.  I don't like the lack of a touch screen, the buttons are clunky, it's made of plastic for heaven's sake.  But I've been trialling it and I think it's starting to grow on me.  The key thing is when you stop noticing the device and your attention goes back to what you're reading.  

The trial book of choice is Holly Black's Red Glove, sequel to White Cat which I adored earlier in the year.  The happy point has been reached where I'm no longer thinking of the Kindle, but of the book.  The advantages of this thing are starting to present themselves.  You can read one handed, lay the book (not book!) on your lap while you eat and turn the pages by hitting the button with a chopstick*, it's lighter than a book of double the thickness if you take it out of the case** and it's right - the strain on your eyes that I've come to expect when reading off a screen just isn't there.  The electronic ink is quite fab.  But the flash up of the next page in negative is horribly off-putting and I do keep coming back to the fact that it's plastic and for me, that just feels a bit wrong.  I reserve the right to change my mind when I'm tired and it reads to me.  

With a bit of luck we'll get the eBook management system up and running and over the next few months request either some additional funding or some donations so that we can get a couple more and start loaning them out.  Exciting times! 

Speaking of exciting times, thank you to all the students who have helped me out this week while I hobbled around the library and shouted at you all from the comfy chairs.  After pulling a tendon in my knee (not recommended) I've been very grateful to you all for being so fab!



* Please do not hit library loans with chopsticks.
** Which weighs almost as much as the Kindle!  Daft, but also detracts from the overwhelming plastic-ness of it.

Stock-take Challenge!

It's Activities Week so there are no classes booked into the library.  This was our best and only chance to get a stock take done, something that I haven't done since I took over the post.  The difficulty is my contract - term time only, so instead of doing such things that require an empty library in the holidays, I have to try to squeeze them in around manic numbers of students.

Our catalogue lists over nearly eleven thousand, which used to take two and a half weeks to stock-take.  Our challenge was to do it in one!  This required careful planning and a cut-throat system.

1. Acquire wireless netbook and a spare scanner. 

Then the computer can be put on the reshelving trolley and wheeled around.  I'm pretty sure that three days of the old time was spent just carrying books to the desk. Nightmare waste of time!

2. Instigate system. 

Pick up a book, scan it.  Then PUT IT BACK.  No stopping and checking it through, no thinking 'gosh, this looks interesting,' and flicking through the pages.  Such things were FORBIDDEN.  If the book was in the wrong place, never mind.  Parent volunteers can help us to check the order another week.  If the book fell apart in my hands, a small green PostIt would be stuck in the top, then it was to go straight back on the shelf. Barcode unrecognised?  Add it to the pile on the trolley and LEAVE IT THERE.  No investigation, no 'Oh, I'll just check the title on the catalogue...' No.

3. Keep going.

On Monday I worked alone, annoying the rest of the staff using the library for their Review Day, and took one half hour break to eat lunch.  Coffee was drunk at the trolley, toilet breaks were limited. On Tuesday, Mrs Sweet helped to keep everyone else away from me while I carried on.  And when Mrs Clarke arrived on Wednesday, she was shown how it all worked and since then, the sound of beeping has not paused for more than a minute.  We've staggered breaks and lunchtimes, had one of us working though constantly.

Of these I think that the portability of the computer probably made the most difference, but The System is the one that I'm most proud of.  It took guts and it took discipline, but it's really worked.

And you know what?  We've done it.  10.30 am on Friday morning, and the stock-take that used to take two and a half weeks is complete.

The 'Missing' list is quite long - about 200 items, but this is less than 2% of our stock, and in the two years since the last one, we've migrated the catalogue to our new system, moved a lot around, and been fantastically busy!  Over the next two weeks we'll spend time mopping up - Mrs Sweet is the finding stuff queen and I'm sure will get that number down to under 100 before we break up for the summer.

WIN.

Student Blog update

Following our very sucessful use of our student blog for Carnegie this year, we're not going to stop!  We'll now be shadowing the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, which is a fantastic set of eight books:

My Name is Mina by David Almond

Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton

Small Change for Stuart by Lissa Evans

Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge

Return to Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan

Moon Pie by Simon Mason

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher

Momentum by Saci Lloyd

This will be a much more independent project than the Carnegie, but we have a dedicated team who are already gathering their books together and reviewing! With the award stretching over the summer, there will also be the challenge of getting books to each other over the break, so we're going to trial use of an enbedded forum.  I'm still sorting through the security settings, but I'm hopeful that this will give them an ongoing point of contact during the break.  

Making the Move

Yup, we've shifted over to Blogger.  Wordpress was pretty, but with the Roundwood Readers blog running so well on here, it seemed to daft to continue in a different place.  So we're back to where the embedding is easy and Miss A can remember her sign in...

Carnegie Blog

Just realised how silent this blog is in comparison to our new Readers' blog!  Take a look here to see why this one had tumbleweeds all over it.

#busy

Carnegie Day

 

It’s all coming to an end!

Yes, it’s Carnegie announcement day, which means that all of this joy is coming to an end.  But there’s been so much wonderful stuff happening this year!

Last Wednesday we were visited by the Shadowers at Sir John Lawes school across town.  It was fantastic to hear some new opinions on the books, and though some of the discussions were heated, we made some excellent new friends and are really looking forward to doing more with them in the future.  Hopefully they will join us in becoming Nerdfighters! Many thanks to Ms Warman for arranging their visit and piling them all into the minibus.

 



Then yesterday we had an amazing Shadowing meeting and took part in something very new to us – a Twitter interview with Patrick Ness!  We all settled down with tribute doughnuts, went through the inevitable ICT emergency (why block Twitter school?!  Why?!) but were all set and ready to go at 1.30.  Will and I typed in questions and queries, and Patrick answered them all, giving us an insight into his writing.  The tweets have been archived here, so if you’d like to have a look at our questions, please go ahead!  We’d like to say a huge thank you to Patrick for giving us his time.

 



 

And now, the day is here.  Thursday 23^rd June.  Carnegie Day.

At 12.30, they will announce the winner of this year’s Carnegie medal, and we’ll know if our Shadowing vote matched that of the judges.  So I guess it’s time to announce our own winner.

The RPS Readers Carnegie Shadowing winner for 2011 is…

 

Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness.



 

This amazing book held us captivated right the way through as the war raged.  Our sympathies were pulled tight across all sides at one time or another and many returned from reading this book with shredding nails!  Those who read it as a stand alone enjoyed it and appreciated the story for what it was enough that some of these readers were among those who voted it their winner.  And those who read the whole trilogy were bowled over by the complexities and involvement that they felt with the characters, all of whom we came to love or admire in some way.  Yes, even the Mayor.  He may be the most wonderful villain ever created.

Awesome.

Review-a-mania

37 Shadowers!   I'm sure this should be greeted with a fanfare every time I say it.  Really fab number.  And since that meeting, and the thirty second demolishing of three double sized packets of biscuits, over a dozen reviews have been posted to our Shadowing Blog, at least one for each of the shortlisted novels.  So if you've had a look at the shortlist and  you're not sure where to start, have a look and see what our students think before you make your choice.

Good work everyone!

First reviews trickling in

We don't have 34 Shadowers anymore.  We have 37.  Aces.

After a slight panic that we wouldn't be able to buy in enough books for them all (a perfectly justified fear, as it turned out) the Shadowers were asked to chose one book from the shortlist and buy their own copy to then share.  Today several books were added to the Carnegie shelf with just a name scribbled inside, so a huge thank you to those students who have already been shopping and are so generously sharing their books.  Makes me a little bit teary to be honest *sniffs*  Ahem.  Anyway...

The first reviews are up on our blog and have been copied over to our official Shadowing site, hosted by CILIP.  Plans are in the pipeline for some very exciting student participation this year, with videos, fan fiction (including some from the POV of the Spackle from Patrick Ness's Monsters of Men - awesome) and animated book trailers on their way.  With any luck there'll be a few surprises before the winner is announced too.

It's an odd week this week, with only two school days before we run away to largely ignore someone's wedding, but that means another gorgeously long weekend with plenty of reading time.  Thumbs up, Royals ;)  We're also celebrating the fact that several of our students were out of school at the University of Hertfordshire Creative Writing Competition Development Day, after having their entries shortlisted. Good luck to them for the next stage too.

Carnegie Shadowing is GO!

This lunchtime saw our first formal meeting of the Carnegie Shadowing group, and they all turned up clutching books and reaching for copies of the shortlist.  All thirty four of them.  Yup.  Thirty four Shadowers this year.  Aces.

Sadly this has caused a bit of a crisis in the book stock department, as although we have 4-5 copies of each of the shortlisted books, some of them have yet to be delivered and even then they are we won't have enough.  Luckily, our Shadowers have agreed that they will all buy one copy of one of the books and swap them around.  Phew.

Our new site is up and running, and there should be reviews trickling through over the next day or two, as those who grabbed books last Friday are already finishing them off.

This and NaNoWriMo are my favourite times of the year.  I think I even like them more than Christmas...

The Mortal Instruments, by Cassandra Clare

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="425" caption="Parts I - IV"][/caption]

Clary has grown up thinking that she’s entirely normal, until one day she sees people who others seem to miss, their eyes just skate over them.  Enter the world of the Shadowhunters, where humans born with the blood of an angel in their veins, the Nephilim, fight to defend the world from the evils that would wish humanity harm.  Uneasy alliances with vampires and werewolves, dashing warlocks, a likable heroine and a marvellously sardonic hero make these books a fantastic read.



This is one of those series to get utterly lost in, so if you’re planning to read them, make sure that you have them all lined up.  This is a complex series of many characters, but they are drawn well enough that I found myself gossiping about them with students right away, and I must admit that there is something slightly soap-opera-ish about it all.  Forbidden love (there were several very confused teens wandering around the library muttering, ‘But it’s so right!  And so wrong!’ an evil absent father, a complex history and back story, heroism, awkward and potentially forbidden love (there’s a scene in City of Glass that had us all squealing and clapping our hands), loyalty and revenge. Combined with this is a consistent and workable mythology.  Oh, and really nasty demons and monsters too.  Awesome.  And I’m totally crushing on Luke.

 

There are some books that you read, love and hug quietly to your chest.  They’re a private experience.  This series is very much a shared one, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the range of its appeal; I’d thought that this might be dismissed as a girly book, but the boys in our reading circle seem to have embraced it just as fully as the girls.  To quote one of them ‘Well, it’s a bit like Twilight, but, you know, good.’

Bring on City of Fallen Angels.

Carnegie Shortlist announced

Yup it's my favourite time of year again - Carnegie Time!

 

Our Shadowing group seems to have about doubled in size this year, though it could be even more: we'll not know until our first official meeting next Wednesday lunchtime, but so far interest levels have been at an all time high.

 

The shortlist was announced today:

Prisoner of the Inquisition, by Theresa Breslin



Zarita, only daughter of the town magistrate lives a life of ease. Saulo, son of a family reduced by circumstances to begging, swears vengeance, after witnessing his father wrongfully arrested and brutally killed. As the Spanish Inquisition arrives, bringing a climate of suspicion and acts of torture to the town, the fates of Zarita and Saulo intertwine, with tragic consequences.

The Death Defying Pepper Roux, by Geraldine McCaughrean



Pepper Roux awakes on his fourteenth birthday; the day he has been told he must die. He doesn't want to disappoint, but he doesn't want to die either. So he goes on the run, setting sail on a sea of adventures, courting mayhem and disaster at every turn. Can he escape his fate – for a while at least?

Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness



The third and final volume in the "Chaos Walking Trilogy" finds three armies marching on New Prentisstown, each intent on destroying the others. Todd and Viola are caught in the middle with no chance of escape or, it seems, of stopping the fighting. But then a third voice enters the fray, one bent on revenge.

The Bride's Farewell, by Meg Rosoff



On the morning of her wedding, Pell Ridley creeps out of bed in the dark, kisses her sisters goodbye and flees on horseback, determined to escape a future that offers nothing but hard work, and sorrow. The road ahead is rich with encounters that lead her closer to the untold story of her past. And she meets a hunter, whose fate also seems strangely entwined with her own.

White Crow, by Marcus Sedgwick



Two lives, two centuries apart, but obsessed by the same question: is there life after death? When city girl Rebecca arrives in the quiet village of Winterfold one relentlessly hot summer, her uneasy friendship with strange, elfin Ferelith sets in motion a shocking chain of events

Out of Shadows, by Jason Wallace



It is Zimbabwe in the 1980s. The civil war is over, independence has been won, and Robert Mugabe has come to power, offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. For Robert Jacklin, it's all new too as he gets used to a new continent, a new country, a new school. But he is quickly forced to realise that for many of his fellow pupils, the battle for their old country rages on.

 

Good list! There were cheers and whoops for some of the books when the list was read out at break time.

 

This year we're also taking our Shadowing participation a step further.  Last year some of our members were frustrated by the lack of user functionality on our official Shadowing site (y'know, that one that WON the Shadowing site prize - wooo!) so this year, as well as running that, we'll be posting to our very own, super-swanky new blog - the Roundwood Readers! We'll be posting out reviews, thoughts, and book trailers  there, giving us the chance to show you more photos of our process, more videos of our discussions, and more of our ever valuable opinions! Comments and feedback on the student posts would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry blog

I know I've been neglecting you.  It's been a crazy busy time, with the regular library stuff, a full time job on its own, getting busier than ever, and a couple of events that have taken up a lot of time but should end up being very beneficial.

 
The first was the launch of our Trust School Status, a mini-charrette (consultation process) with the Trust Partners (Herts Uni, Sir John Lawes School, Presedence ICT and Rothamsted) that was held at the University on the 22nd March.  Thirteen of our students and a similar number from SJL went along to talk through plans and ideas about how the Trust could be work for the schools and what we could all bring to the mix.  Our students did so well and spoke eloquently and confidently, often leading discussion and feedback sessions.  I know the staff at the University and the Trust partners were very impressed with all of them!  Of course, knowing what they're all like it wasn't a huge surprise for me, though Alex's capacity for crisps came as a bit of a surprise, and Max's attachment to the flipboard pens was a little worrying.  Congratulations to everyone who took part though.

The second was my trip up to Cambridge for the Cambridge Librarians' TeachMeet.  It was my first one and I'd taken the bold step of agreeing to present, which may have been a little foolhardy.  It was a wonderful evening though, and I learned a lot from all there as well as having the chance to put names to Twitter names! My presentation went well though, and you can see it here:

[slideshare id=7436719&doc=camlibtmnicky-110329155637-phpapp01]

The notes are available over here.

And now with these over, I'm clear to focus on my favourite part of the library year.  It's Carnegie Shadowing time!

Awesome

Have been playing with the avatar generator on the Skullduggery Pleasant site.

Aces.



Complete with roller derby nose plaster.

World Book Day

Happy World Book Day everyone!  It’s been a frenetic day up here in the library, with the book swap running through break and lunchtime, with some fantastic books being offered for exchange this year.



We’ve also been handing out the £1 book tokens to forms all round the school and showing off the posters for the specially published books.



Sofie, Tegan and Lucy took over the library at lunch to run a very successful and impressively rowdy game of Book Charades, with dozens of students from all year groups taking part.  Year 7 dominated though, possibily because they could yell the most.



There were quizzes and competitions with all the entries being taken before the end of the break, and now we’re sitting up in the computer area working on our stories for the various creative writing competitions that our writing groups are entering this term.

Around this merry chaos, reading and knitting continued.



Our charity knitting group are working well and have started sewing their first blanket together.  Their skill is increasing every day and there are fewer dropped stitches to pick up now.



Lovely day!

First Steps

The first batch of DVDs have arrived! Also out of shot there's another box with Science based ones, such as Planet Earth and The Sky at Night, as well as several History documentaries.  But as you can see, we've gone for the classics in terms of tie-ins with the texts taught by English, and have invested quite a lot in our new Modern Foreign Languages selection, which I think are going to be really useful for students studying languages at GCSE and A level.  Additionally there are just a few that I couldn't do without ;)

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

 

This is a Christmas story really, so I came to it a little late in the game, but with the last remnants of flu still hanging around, this was a fun book to curl up under a blanket with.

Dash is browsing in his favourite New York bookshop when he finds a red Moleskin notebook with a message and a task written on its pages.  When he decides to take the notebook up on its offer of adventure, he completes the task and leaves it with a new one of his own, striking up an interesting relationship with its owner, Lily.  What I really enjoyed about this story was the role that the notebook played for the two of them, a connection and a place where they could show their real and honest selves, the selves that they couldn't often show in real life for fear of appearing too vulnerable.  Written in alternate chapters by the book's two authors, Dash and Lily are two very distinct voices, but there's a point somewhere a long the way where you can hear that they're picking up the same language, and as they get closer to meeting, the hope that they'll suit each other is balanced out by the awful fear that they might not.  Sounds a bit sicky, doens't it?  And it could it, were it not for Dash's sardonic manner and the wodnerful supporting cast, provided mostly by Lily's extended family. I hope one day I can be as marvellous as her aunt.

This is non-frilly and at times gut wrenching romance that will appeal to anyone who picks it up!