Category: Displays

The Power of Quotes for Inspiration

Published on by sengaw20 Comments

At the end of last term we settled on a very simple idea to fill space above our fiction shelves and the ceiling so it didn’t look so bare.

Christine, one of our part-time staff had been processing the new Bear Grylls’ book  A Survival Guide for Life:  how to achieve your goals, thrive in adversity and grow in character. She made an off-hand comment about how striking some of Bear’s sayings are that are scattered throughout the book.  The ensuing conversation led to a brainstorming session which resulted in us deciding to create a series of posters with great sayings to inspire our boys.

Quotes posters

I sent an email out to staff asking them to send me some of their favourite quotes they either use in the classroom or would like to use with students and was pleased with the response.  I also trawled through ones I’d saved and others on some good websites and came up with 50.

After typing up the quotes we printed them on buff coloured A3 paper, laminated them and then stuck them up on the wall.

I was a happy librarian.  But what has made me an ecstatic librarian was observing a Year 7 teacher using these with her class during the last five minutes of her library visits both last week and this week.  She asked the boys to have a look and choose one that they liked or that they wanted to share with the rest of the class. She then gave them the opportunity to read out their chosen quote and invited them to share what it meant to them or what deeper meaning it might have.

Here are three they chose today:

No. 26

No. 13

No. 35

My own personal favourite is:

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right” – Henry Ford

I want to make it a round 60 so I need another few yet.  Have you got a special inspirational quote?  I’d love you to share it here so I can find my final 10.

Sometimes it’s the little things ……

Published on by sengaw3 Comments

So Term 4 has begun and even though we’re only at the end of week 1,  I have to say I’m very happy that Labour Weekend is ahead of us and with it a welcome three day weekend!

2012 might not be quite done and dusted yet, in fact quite a bit still remains to do before I can say that, but I already have my 2013 Ideas Notebook open…..

……..and entries being made for consideration for next year.

One of the ideas I played around with and ended up adding yesterday was thanks to a link and an idea Michele Coombridge posted on the SLANZA Facebook page.

The Catalog Card Generator is a neat little tool which is fun and very easy to use.  It is similar to the Newspaper Clipping Generator that’s been around for several years and some of you may have seen and used it.  The Catalog Card Generator allows you create an old-fashioned manual card for any book you want to, complete with scribbles on it for a little authenticity.   Michele’s great idea was to use it to promote a book which has just a black cover.

I wanted to know what a generated card would look like so I grabbed the book that’s sitting on my desk at the moment (which happens to be my new favourite read for this year!!) The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, an absolutely brilliant debut novel, a treasure and a fortunate find.  So I whipped up a catalog card for it in less than a minute, printed it out, and here’s what it looks like:

This visual highlighter will work nicely with some of our ideas for promoting specific books next year.

Some of our ideas include:

  • Pick of the Day – This will be selected by one of our Library Team and will have pride of place on the main desk so visitors can see it when they come into the library
  • Odyssey Book of the Week – this relates to a new reading initiative I’ve been working on this year.  It’s being trialled this term and will be part of our English programme from 2013 (More to come on this in a later post)
  • Highlighting Non-Fiction – We have some great non-fiction reads on the shelf that we need to market to the students, who would enjoy them but might not necessarily find them.  This could be a great way of making these books stand out

Sincerely, a big thanks to you Michele for sharing this simple but great idea – and not just the link! With the overwhelming number of links and emails I receive each day it’s impossible to explore them all so the links shared that actually have a suggested use or a “this is how I use it” story means I’m more likely to take a look at it.   The great ideas don’t always have to be the big ones.  Sometimes they are the very simple, easy but extremely effective ones that have already worked for someone else.