Travelling in Libraries ;)

Hello guys!

What do you think about libraries? Do you consider them as good for children? Or in this period of time, when everything you can get easily on the internet, they are not that much necessary? /I will appreciate every comment you will leave ;) / I think that every child should experience library, to find out how many of amazing books he or she can find there and there is also calm space for her or him to read, just to take a book and enjoy reading.

Day before yesterday we were presenting the homework our teacher Raquel gave us. We were supposed to create a library in the classroom, with the lowest budget and with the highest creative ideas. I really appreciated other ideas of my classmates to create really nice place to read for children, but I think me and my group including Nuria, Martina, Alberto, Eduardo and Rebeca did a really good job, which I would like to familiarize you with now.

Firstly, we created a space, where students can borrow books and also to read. The easiest way, we consider, is in the one corner of the class. Every time in the class there is a free desk, nobody is sitting at, and it can easily function as shelf. To low our budget, we would use chairs of children, they can easily bring from the place they are sitting on them in the class.

To keep library organized, we created baskets, where we organize different kinds of book in. It will depend

what the students will bring, or what our sources will get, but there can be a basket of Fairytales, basket of Picture books or basket of Adventurous stories. We also created basket of Best books, where the students will have best book of the week, which they will choose weekly.

Of course it is necessary to not forget about sources. Firstly we recommend to ask parents, where they have any books available for library, and we will make them sure at the end of the year they will get them back. So parents and students can bring from their homes lot of books. This is the same with teacher or even more teachers, who are effort to bring some books. As other important source we consider some business companies, business people or everybody who is willing to add a book to library for kids.

Very important thing in our library is Library checkout. The function of this checkout is to keep evidence about the books students have borrowed. Every student will have a card, where teacher will write the name of the book she or he borrowed, the same with returning books back to library, it is very easy way to keep the books organized.

We have created also a box, to which the students will put the name of the book they recommend, so from time to time we can choose most favourite book to read in the class.

There is many activities guys, you can do in the library, but here is a list the best ones according me:

Reader of the week

This competition will take place every week. Children are supposed to read books through the week and in the end of the week there will be an evaluation, where the reader of the week will be awarded in the „wall of the fame“. We can easily check how many books each student has read according our Library Checkout.

Best reader

This competition will be evaluated in the end of the year, when we will find the best reader of the year and our winner will be awarded with the book.

We recommend to ask students to keep records about what they have read in exercise book called „Reader´s diary“, where she or he can write short summary from the book or draw a picture about the book, but what more important, what they liked about the book – what can easily remind them what was the book about and they can use it later in their studies.

Market of the books

Children will be divided into few groups, where every group will create a stall in the market with different kinds of books. I would recommend to do this activity at the beginning while creating the library. They can compete between each other, in the way, half of a class will be in the lesson people walking in the market, when second half of students will be people trying to „sell“ their books-trying to persuade people to buy from they stole, because they have such a great books! Other class they can change positions and after this, students will choose winners of the market.

Special week can be activity focused on the parents, who would come to see kids in the class and they would show them their library or even they can play small theatre in the class for them from the book they will choose. Other type of activity with this name can take place every week, students will have every week special topic from the books they will talk about. They can, for example, read fairytales, comics or books full of riddles and we can easily have many activities connected with these topics.  

Reading for friends

This activity will be different. Students will take their favourite book and will go to streets to read for people they meet in there – their new friends. They can read for people waiting at the bus stop, they can go to shops, to dentist and they will just simply ask “may I read a few lines from my favourite book?”. We tried this activity in Slovakia and kids really love it, they had lot of fun.

I hope guys, you have found some inspiration for your classes and you will be successful in working in projects about libraries ! ;)

See ya soon

Lenka