In the summer holidays I enjoy spending time planning my library lessons for the year ahead. It’s a relaxed, more creative time and I enjoy jotting down my ideas and planning out the year. It’s an adaptable plan, that changes depending on the needs that arise during the year, but I love having a solid plan to start the year.
These lessons are for my fortnightly sessions with the Year 7 and 8 English classes. The focus of the sessions is on supporting reading for pleasure, encouraging students to engage with the library with confidence and supporting the English curriculum and units of work.
I start by mapping the English units, so I know which topic is being studied when and what will be most appropriate for our sessions. Some units require introductions, some require access to a particular collection and others need help with research skills or multimedia skills.
Once I have the units and skills required for each mapped out, I can begin to include the library and reading-relevant topics and skills, including how to find a good book, using the library catalogue, browsing skills, reading tips, research skills, referencing, and recording and multimedia creation skills.
The start of the year includes a welcome to the Library for the Year 7s and information they’ll need to access the space and collections. We spend sessions completing scavenger hunts around the library and I tie them into their unit topic, fantasy.
For the Year 8s, it’s a refresher session on the library and we dive into resources for their topic.
Each lesson has a dedicated time for browsing, reading and borrowing. I’m looking forward to spending time in our new reading nook during these times.
I like to brainstorm ideas on how to make each topic fun and engaging, search for inspiration on blogs, books and social media, and then map out the sequence of lessons on paper and then digitally. There’s something about paper that helps bring out my creativity.
I’m looking forward to bringing these lessons to life this year and sharing with you the successes and what needs to be changed moving forward.