Sharon's Visit

I was delighted to have my friend Sharon from Hamilton come and stay for a few days. Not only is she a good friend (so we had a lot of talking to do) but she is also a children's book author. On Friday she spent the day at Amesbury School. She spoke to all the students and took a group of 15 students for a writing session.  They were thrilled to work with her and afterwards made comments such as "I'm a better writer than I thought I was" and "I can write confidently now and not be afraid to put my ideas out there and know I can do it".

Here are some related links:
Sharon at Amesbury School
Sharon Holt (on the Book Council website)
Te Reo Singalong website - these books are just great for using Te Reo Maori with young children in a fun way.

About Time for Another Post

Oops, another month has disappeared and my blog is looking a bit neglected.  Work is busy, busy, busy. One of the teachers I work with went to a meeting at Parliament today to talk about a submission made by Amesbury School to a select committee inquiry into 21st century learning environments and digital literacy. One question they asked was how many hours a week she worked. I wonder if they were surprised when she told them the facts - daytime, evening, weekends - and certainly not just 9am to 3pm. I wish I could work 9 to 3 and enjoy 12 weeks holiday a year!

The school library is also busy and it's great to see the children coming and going during the day.  Most of them can issue and return books independently using our RFID scanning system and we now have a dozen netbooks, some iPads, iPods, Android tablets and eReaders.  Some of the children still need adult help of course. One five year old approached me the other day and asked how to spell her last name. "Why do you need to know that?" I asked. Her reply was, "My parents have secrets and I want to use Google to find out their secrets". Priceless!

Shelves At Last

The library shelves have finally arrived! Well, most of them have. After a six week wait the shelves arrived at school this morning and installation began - only to discover that several of them were missing! Fortunately the installer hadn't sent the original incorrectly painted shelves back to the manufacturer yet. They are sitting in his shed so he was able to retrieve some and they will be installed temporarily until that problem is sorted. At least the non-fiction books will have something to sit on other than the floor. The mobile picture book shelf isn't quite right either and nor is the proportion of sloping display shelves to flat shelves. Ahhhh! Who knew that shelves could be quite so complicated? One good thing is that the kids are excited to see shelves in the library. We almost appreciate a few pieces of wood more than iPads and touchscreen computers at the moment.