At Stewart, we had a pretty loud library. There were robots racing through the stacks, the rustle of tubs of LEGOs being dug into, and the chatter of excited students talking about their favorite books and collaborating on projects. At my current school, the previous culture of the library had been one where a whisper … Read more
3 Myths About Libraries, Makerspaces and Books Even though they’ve been around since 2013, school library makerspaces still have a lot of misunderstandings surrounding them. This confusion can come from administrators, teachers, students and the librarians themselves. Unfortunately, believing these myths can often cause decisions to be made about libraries that are detrimental to the … Read more
How I Organized My Fiction Collection by Genre At the end of the 2017-2018 school year, I genrefied my school’s fiction collection. This section of the collection is relatively small at the moment (about 2,000 books). I intend to grow it a lot, so it made sense to me to get started in my first … Read more
Good signage is vital in a learning space. Ideally, your students should be able to walk into your space, look around, and find the things that they need without having to ask for help. Realistically, I know that this isn’t usually what happens, but it’s the goal to aim for. In general, I would say … Read more
Our libraries are no longer solely the silent, individual study zones that they used to be. More and more schools are recognizing the value of collaboration, and the library can be the perfect place to support it. But traditional library environments (think heavy wooden individual tables, tall, imposing stacks, etc) don’t really provide a collaborative … Read more
I don’t normally review fiction on my blog, but Click’d ties in beautifully with makerspaces and would be a fantastic addition to your library. Here’s why: Read this Book: Click’d (Post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using them, I get a small commission that helps support running this blog.) Allie Navarro loves to … Read more
It’s a new school year! Some of you may already be back, and some of you may be counting down the last days of summer. Either way, a new year is a fresh start, a chance to change things up and make your library program better. Here’s some things to think about as you get … Read more
Most of us probably have something in our library space that we want to change. Or many things that we want to change. It can be daunting trying to figure out where to start and what you want your space to become. That’s why I always recommend gathering inspiration for your space. Visiting other spaces, … Read more
(Note: I’m a bit behind on reposting these here, so please excuse the lateness) January is a popular month for resolutions, detoxes, resets, etc. It’s the perfect time to reflect on the previous year, to look at what went right and what could have been better. Being that it’s also the middle of the school … Read more
While I’ve never worked in an elementary school before, I’m always on the lookout for awesome maker picture books. Picture books are a great way to introduce a lesson or activity in makerspaces. We even have a whole chart on maker picture book connections in Challenge Based Learning (check out the resources page to see … Read more