I love changing the spaces in my Library. We are regularly changing things around, moving furniture and changing the purpose of areas to suit student needs and respond to different behaviour or events.
This year we’ve pretty much changed every area of the secondary library. That includes making changes to the study area, changing the layout of collections on the ground floor and creating a new reading area.
I’ve long wanted to create a space in our busy, noisy library that is dedicated to reading. Of course students can read anywhere in our space, but they didn’t have a dedicated zone that really promoted and protected reading. That was one of my big goals this year, to create just such a space.
It wasn’t something I wanted to spend much money on, it was more about moving furniture around and repurposing what we had. We started by moving the large study tables and nooks out of the area. And then moved a range of soft furnishings we had around the library into the space. This included four bean bags that had been previously removed from our sunken area due to safety reasons, a curved couch set-up, and two other couches that had been in my library teaching area, which I replaced with tables.
What I did spend a little bit of money on were frames (from IKEA), and some fake greenery (we are not allowed real plants). Some I purchased from Kmart and others I purchased from IKEA. We printed CC0 images in-house for the frames and I selected lots of images of Australian landscapes, animals and plants. Of course the final touch were books on display.
I want to make sure this zone remains a dedicated reading area, so I created some simple posters in Canva and have added them to the space.
I’ve moved one of my mobile TVs into the area, but I don’t have any power outlets in the space, so it might have to go. The idea was to have a slideshow of new books displaying.
We’ll be monitoring the space closely before school and during breaks, modelling reading in there (yes, that means we might have to read at lunchtime) and promoting it widely to students. I hope it makes those students who are looking for a quiet retreat feel like they have a place to go and helps to encourage and support reading this year.