INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL LIBRARY DAY 2016

It's here again and we’ll be taking part in the Skype Adventures and Bookmark Exchange Projects! This year's theme is:

Learn to Decode Your World!

This project involves matched schools making creative, homemade bookmarks to exchange with each other. It is a simple, fun way of sharing the joy and fun of books and libraries and of making new friends through school libraries worldwide.

We have been paired up with students from

Kendriya Vidyalaya Iiit Jhalwa from Uttar Pradesh, India,
Kwok Man School from the New Territories, Hong Kong,
Technical School Slavonski Brod from Slavonski Brod, Croatia &
Kiskunfélegyházi József A. Ált. Isk. Platán Utcai Tagintézménye in Hungary.

We will also connect with our partnered schools on Padlet, our school library blog, Edmodo and Skype as we make our bookmarks so that we can learn something about other cultures and different ways of life. So..

COME, CONNECT, CREATE!

Your School Library - Mind Map Central

International School Library Month (ISLM) is celebrated every year in October. It first began as simply International School Library Day in 1999, but in 2008 it was decided to make it an entire month to honour the fantastic work of school libraries all over the world and their contribution to student achievement and development. 

This year, our theme is Your School Library: Mind-Map Central. Mind-mapping is a way of note taking -in a visual form that gives you an overview of a topic and its complex information. This lets you understand more easily, create new ideas and build connections. It can also be a really cool way to brainstorm and organise ideas for projects, research and essays.

Akinoglu and Yasar, 2007 and Abi-El-Mona et al., 2008 showed that students who use mind mapping show improved creativity, organisation, productivity, and memory for mastering complicated ideas!

Creating a mind map is simple too... you can just use a whiteboard or sheet of drawing paper & coloured markers, or if you prefer, there are many software options from which to choose. Here are 5 great free choices –

• Examtime 
• Xmind 
• Coggle 
• Freemind
• CubeCreator and our school library collection is also a brilliant starting point for any mind mapping exercise! 

We have some amazing activities on @ourlibrary this month; our library prefect community outreach at the NALIS Celebrity Tale a Thon on Sunday 26th to begin National Library Week, librarian led CubeCreator user sessions, to Skype adventures with students from schools in Portugal, UK, USA and other mystery destinations and of course our Bookmark Exchange with our new friends in Portugal. And of course, the book collection is, as always, amazing. So don't forget to check us out @ourlibrary!

References

Abi-El-Mona, I, (2008). The Influence of Mind Mapping on Eighth Graders’ Science Achievement. School Science and Mathematics, 180, 298-312.

Akinoglu, O. & Yasar, Z. (2007). The effects of note taking in science education through the mind mapping technique on students’ attitudes, academic achievement and concept learning. Journal of Baltic Science Education, 6 (3), 34-43.

International School Libraries Month Bookmark Exchange 2014

To celebrate International School Libraries Month 2014, our school has been paired up with the Agrupamento de Escolas N.º2 de Rio Tinto. Click on the image to see our fun messages to each other!

Sharing learning and hugs from Trinidad to Portugal and back again!

International School Libraries Month is here again!

We all know that school libraries are really awesome places to find information when you need it, to check out the most exciting books, to discover how to use the newest, coolest apps anywhere and to connect with friends, new and old, in person or online. But this is just the start... even after you leave school, you'll still be able to use the skills you have learned in our school library to find and use information, in all kinds of formats, to do whatever you want.

The characters in our ISLM poster illustrate some of the media  we use in our library to share information - 

* Brittney Books,*  Lana Laptop, * Polly Poster, * Ivan iPod, * Tanya Tablet, * Molly Magazine & *Edward eReader and * Nelly Newspaper.

All this month, there will be book talks, read aloud sessions, displays and many other activities on each week. The library prefects will even be assisting as official helpers at the NALIS Fun Day on Sunday 27th October at the National Library bulding!

  

     

So don't forget to pop in and check out what's on @ Our Library!

Our ISLM Bookmark Exchange!

   PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO HEAR THE MUSIC!
Last year, we had so much fun creating our bookmarks and artifacts for our two Global Classroom buddies during International School Libraries Month, that this year, we decided to go even bigger. So we're exchanging bookmarks with schools in FIVE countries - Croatia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Pakistan and the United States of America!

Since this year is also the 50th anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago's independence, we have chosen to let all our bookmarks reflect the theme of our Proud to read T&T project. We explored NALIS' website thoroughly  especially the subject guide and digital library collection. Each handcrafted bookmark shares something very special about our country, something unique and very Trinbagonian!

International School Libraries Month

We have Bookmark Buddies!
International School Library Month is celebrated in schools all over the world in October each year. The ISLM theme for 2011 is 'School Libraries Empower Learners for Life'. To celebrate this month, we had several different activities @ our library.

The Form 1s were delighted to find out that we had been chosen by 3 schools in Croatia; the 4th Elementary School, Bjelovar, the Grigor Vitez Elementary School, St. John Žabno, Josipa Jurja Strossmayera Elementary School, and 1 school from the town of Novouralsk, in the Sverdlovsk region, Russia in the Bookmark Exchange. 

We wondered why they had chosen us and all concluded that it had to be because Trinidad and Tobago is so special! So we decided to find out more about our wonderful country so we could show everyone just what makes us so different! We'll be sharing what we've learnt in Skype sessions with our new friends and right here on our blog, so keep posted!

Ms. Heywood