staff; and with other staff stretched covering smaller groups this may force school librarians to limit access to the library entirely.
l One of the benefits of the new working practice is that school library staff have been available to attend staff meetings, which are usually before school or dur- ing break times when they are working with pupils in the library.
Best practice and innovation There have been some amazing things being done by school library staff; deliver ing books to pupils, writing letters to them, putting videos on Instagram… but here’s some examples in their own words:
Debra Perrin – I’ve produced a Padlet of resources for them which I update when I find new things. I shared with all year groups a Google Slides document for EarthDay2020 and World Book Night 2020 with recommended reading and websites.
Ann Marie – Quizzes; book reviews; book club online discussion; decorate eggs as book characters; book scavenger hunt; redesign a book cover of famous book; EPQ PP to help; activities to prompt year 12 to understand EPQ.
Helen Emery – Following the YA Book Prize with Year 9 using the free extracts on their website and Show My Homework to contact students. Also Accelerated Reader with Year 8 and lots of Twitter for our parents. Encouraged #read- inghour last night with pictures of staff lockdown reading. Doing SLA branch meetings via zoom.
Andrea Regan – Weekly newsletters to pupils and staff, weekly bookclub on Google Meet, sharing resources with staff/pupils as appropriate, answering enquiries about using our ebooks and audiobooks services, our annual Battle of the Books (knock out tournament to find the most popular book with KS3.)
Catherine Owens – I’m uploading reviews to YouTube. Planning a mindful Monday lunchtime club this Monday.
https://youtu.be/mBQdWQicEvs
Beth Khalil – I have been posting literacy tasks to all year 7 and 8 students every week for them to do alongside pleasure reading at home
Soraya Berry – I have started a student newspaper of lockdown contributions
June-July 2020
which has had a really good response from children!
Deb – Being able to post flexible tasks on Show My Homework has been the best thing I’ve done. Engagement increased massively.
Nicola – I am having my annual book competition to find our favourite YA books. So far the voting has been easier using MS Forms and I have been able to attend meetings in order to talk to staff when I am usually ‘on duty’ during meeting times. In this respect lockdown is beneficial.
Louise Burrows – Lockdown has resulted in e-books being available to our students and instead of just a small contin- gent of students shadowing the Carnegie, an entire year group of over 300 students are now joining in!
One Librarian (at St Hilda’s Library) said
this, which I think is a lovely thought: “Just finished another set of library home deliv- eries. Such a feeling of satisfaction when I see their excited faces and parents say that without this service they couldn’t access any books.”
Changing our points of reference It is undeniable that this situation has changed the reference points for school library staff. In schools where eresources were a “nice to have”, librarians are now being asked for training on e-resources, and suggestions are being met with “oh this is brilliant isn’t it?”, often followed up with “yes, that’s why I’ve been trying to show it to you all term!” And innovation has been forthcoming: staff reading groups have been moved to WhatsApp, a wakelet is being used for transition activities to Uni. Hartland Inter- national School has been doing something
called Picture a Story Live where the librarian reads a longer story and the art teachers draw along live which sounds utterly captivating. A few library staff have mentioned posting a joke a day, which highlights the awareness all staff have of their pupils’ mental health.
How long these activities will need to go on for will depend on whether there’s a second wave, and what advice is being given at the time. The precautions school library staff will need to take will vary. Partially on whether there’s a second wave, and what the R-rate is; some schools that opened to more children in early June have already had to reduce their numbers again within a week or so because there was a rise in infections.
However, despite the innovation there are still some tough questions that need answering. The sector is looking at elending, which has never been fully embraced by the publishing industry, and wondering what it’s going to take to make it viable across all schools. Many school library staff are grap- pling with how to deliver library services to families which have few or no devices. In schools the reluctant readers are the ones we most need to capture and work with, but how do you identify them in a year group you’ve never met? How do you stop an ever widening gap between those families who are spending £100+ on their children every week1
, and those who can’t? How can you increase a child’s academic attainment while also caring for their mental health? Luckily, for this last one, reading is the answer2
, but the questions of how are not so easily answered. IP
References 1
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14849 2
https://bit.ly/31Ylmp1
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