We are all Wonders

The librarian Introduced a listening game called Move forward. It was a fun way for students to learn more about their classmates – the ways in which they are the same and the ways in which they are different.

Then the librarian read aloud a picture story book- “we're all wonders"  by R. J. Palacio. Before reading the story we discussed the cover of the book. This story  is told from the point of view of a boy who gets made fun of for being different. The librarian paused at appropriate places to make comments and ask questions from learners.

After reading, learners were taken to a large chart paper where we had stuck their hand cut-outs. As the entire class watched them carefully no one was able to tell which hand belonged to whom. Finally the learners were asked to suggest suitable heading for the chart paper. (the point was to highlight that we are all unique and yet the same and should respect each other for who we are and not make fun of each other)

 Digital Literacy Week

17th  -21 Oct 2022

Even though many students are digital natives — having grown up in a technological world — educators still lead the way in helping them learn to become good digital citizens.  KC High celebrated Digital Literacy Week from 17th Oct to 22nd Oct 2022 in order to promote awareness across grades.

The ICT department conducted lessons with fun activities for the learners. These topics were the highlights: Being a good digital citizen, importance of online safety, and showing responsibility when using the internet.

During the week the library also got involved with the same theme and promoted digital awareness by read aloud stories to primary learners on staying safe online, online bullying and technology use.

Moreover, to generate awareness among students, the high school learners designed digital literacy posters. The participants were awarded certificates too.

 Recommend A Book!

In order to get the students talking about the books that they have read and enjoyed, we came up with this book recommendation activity. The students were given index cards and they were asked to reflect on their favourite book/s and why they would want other students to read them.

This activity led a great sharing in the library; we could see students coming out of their way and normal class time for writing recommendations, mostly before breakfast and during lunch time.

Finally we displayed the entire collection of opinions and recommendations on index cards on the library display board so that other students could read and get inspired.

                    Mini Research Session

In order to research on Culture in Social studies the learners were given an age appropriate roadmap.

First they were asked to breakdown the broad concept Culture into smaller and related more manageable keywords. This was done by a quick tutorial on how to create Mind maps.  

They were also provided with effective Reading strategies - such as skimming and scanning – in order to find and gather culture related information from source material.

This was an opportunity to introduce students to Note taking tips and Citing of their sources in order to avoid plagiarism and providing credit to the original sources.

In notetaking they learnt to take down important facts and information or gather details in the form of different keywords.

It also served well to reinforce the importance of citing and how and what to collect for citing all the sources that they use or refer.

 

 Grade 4 learners taking notes from books

 

 Reading Pictures 

 “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a common expression many of us use. But how many of us have pondered as to why people say it? This is especially important in an increasingly digital age where we are bombarded with images. Not all of them connect with us but the ones that do are important – we need to understand why and the process involved in it especially the description, analysis and interpretation.

Considering this we organized a session with grade 7 students in order to address three important aspects of visual literacy. 1. What do you see? (the real) 2. What do you think about that? (opinion or judgement or interpretation) and 3. What does it make you wonder? (imagination and making connections).

Students were asked to work in small groups. One student enjoyed the activity to such an extent that he did not submit his work after the activity was over as all other students in their groups did. He asked for more time to work on it in his after school time and redo it on his own properly before getting it in.

 

 Getting the KC Media Centre Organised

Over the last 2 ½ months we have been sorting, arranging, classifying and organizing the entire library collection.

One by one we took down books from the shelves, sorted and classified them into broad categories.

In order to create some additional shelf space for section wise books, we weeded out old and outdated textbooks, sample copies and damaged books. Furthermore, we have also been able to segregate, categorize and provide space for major sections such as the Primary, IGCSE & IBDP textbooks, reference books and teacher resources. We have put temporary signs on the shelves to indicate location of major genres and types of books. This in turn has helped students and teachers locate books better than before. However, we are still short of shelve space for certain books and hope this is addressed.

There have been Teachers and Students who have been helpful by taking up small library tasks. A Special thanks to a few 8^th graders who came forward and volunteered their help lately.

We hope this is a starting point and lot more things that need to be taken care of can be completed quickly.