Pages

Tuesday 14 February 2017

Twelve Mile Coulee L.C. Maker space and more.

Twelve Mile Coulee Learning Commons - Middle School

Our Maker Station cabinet is complete! Students remove the self-contained maker bins, work on a project, challenge or activity and return the bin to the cabinet. They are loving it! The bins I created include: 
- paper crafts (airplanes, boats, weaving, origami);
- STEM building challenges (catapults, pulleys, towers, cardboard projects -- with straws, paper rolls, craft sticks, clothespins, recycled K-cups, etc.);
- zentangle/colouring sheets; 
- textile crafts (crochet, knitting, friendship string and patterns; 
- Lego (Shop Class is putting castors on an IKEA square table that will also have a Lego board glued to the surface); 
- stop-motion supplies, including small white boards and clay; 
- card play (houses, games, magic tricks)
- Adopt-a-Shelf promotional material bin (posters, bookmarks). We followed Nose Creek's example and are encouraging students to "adopt" an LC shelves on one of our pyramids where they display their favourite LC titles. Students sign up for one week beginning next week. We have ALL MONTHS filled with adoptions!

The Maker Station bins contain the supplies and instructions and/or books. I got the majority of the ideas from Pinterest! 

Using our school colours, I created signage to draw attention to the station.

We also created an eLibrary station on the LC counter where students can check on our inventory. This makes them even more aware of the Dewey system and where titles are in the LC. It is very well used, which frees up a lot of my time searching for titles and having a dedicated Chromebook for these searches frees up the iMac stations for other work.


I purchased magazine racks from Grand & Toy and using 3-M hooks, attached them to our pyramid towers to utilize the towers better and ensure floor space isn't used for periodical racks. I've organized them by subject. I also have a rack for Readers, which are organized by level.


Book of the Week: I am so surprised how well this initiative has taken off! I actually overheard a couple of students talking about it, saying, "I wonder what the book of the week is this week?", and they actually check them out! Most of the books I select are checked out by Tuesday. The poster has a brief description of the book, a quote from me as to why I enjoyed it and either a list of other titles by the other or a QR code directing students to a movie trailer or author website. (And, yes, I actually read the book!)


Next on our agenda: Listening stations, a used-book swap and beginner, intermediate and advanced instructional sessions on Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator and maybe InDesign), which I am facilitating. (Teachers can sign up a max of five students per class for a one-period session during regular teaching hours at a time and the LC will be closed for everything other than collecting print jobs during that time.)


Karen Petkau, CBE Library Assistant, Twelve Mile Coulee, Calgary, AB.