There was a frenzy of activity in my household this week as my own kids sprung to life to find perfect Book Week costumes. Learning has been challenging for everyone this term during lockdown. I have been observing how the teacher librarian at my children’s school has supported learning across the whole school during home learning. As a secondary teacher currently still working in a classroom, this experience gave me insight into some of the ways primary teacher librarians were supporting and leading their learning communities.
Throughout the term I have watched an exciting activity pop up every week from the library. In year four this has included a research task on comics and graphic novels and a nature journal to support the Book Week theme Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds. In first grade the students have been inspired by picture books read aloud on YouTube and asked to draw or create something fun in response. As Book Week fast approached, I noticed the library took the spotlight as teachers banded together to ensure lots of fun and engaging activities brought us to the end of a long term of online learning.
Behind the scenes, all this fun was clearly being led by the teacher librarian. Leading by example, the teacher librarian posted pictures of herself in a dress up costume every day for a week. Various library activities were added to Seesaw and Google Classroom to form part of the classwork. The staff followed suit and joined the initiative by sending out clues of who they were dressing up as on the big day. This led to much excitement among the children as they planned which book character they would choose, for the special Zoom meeting at the end of the week. They scoured our bookshelves and raided the dress up box until they had found the perfect costume to match their stories.
Other activities required students to figure out emoji book titles, identify character illustrations and create a book bento box. The bake a book challenge had my seven-year-old flipping through cookbooks to find a recipe to bake, before realising we had run out of sugar! She settled on making Paddington Bear’s marmalade toast. These tasks were all shared with the community via Facebook, so parents could get involved in supporting Book Week activities. My kids had so much fun looking through the photos of their friends on Facebook who responded to the daily challenges. I realised I had seen many of these fantastic ideas before. They were kindly shared on the NSW School Library Matters Facebook page. It goes to show how a network of dedicated professionals sharing ideas can inspire learning by students all over the state.
Finally, on Thursday Greg Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) and Rey (Are you scared, Darth Vader?) were joined by their little brother, the construction worker (What can you see? On a construction site) ready for the big day. At two years old, there was no way my preschooler was missing out on all the fun! I finally got them all to stay still and snapped the yearly Book Week photograph. Despite there being no parade this year, it was still exciting to upload the moment to Facebook for inclusion in the school’s Book Week slide show. What a great way to end an exhausting and unprecedented term of home learning in 2021!
