Senior Primary Display: Walk on the Wild Side

This afternoon, I finished the display for the senior (Grades 4-7) side of the library. After asking the classes which themes would interest them, I settled on 'animals'. This allows me to put animal non-fiction as well as fiction books on the display. I hope that the students enjoy it, and that it is as big of a hit as the "VP and the World" display was on the junior side.

Click to enlarge the images. I hope to take more detailed ones when I have time!

Before - Random collection of posters:

After - Walk on the Wild Side:

The white text is filled with various animal facts and 'Did You Know' snippets. The pink basket to the left is our Animal Ark collection. The various wooden animals were stored in a random cupboard in the library- thanks to whatever teacher/librarian left them there, they were a perfect addition to the display! The centerpiece of the display, the (hopefully) friendly snake turned out better than expected, I didn't follow any design and it somehow looks pretty good for a first attempt. I like the animal font, but if I was to redo the display I would cut the black letters in such a way that they would have white paper as an outline.

My first ever library display!

As I'm sure you can imagine, things are crazy at the moment. Even though I'm only a part-time teacher, there's enough prep-work, admin and sorting-out-the-library-work that it's always possible to stay busy. I managed to enjoy last weekend: I didn't think about any work at all. Being able to switch off has always been one of my weaknesses, ever since I started teaching, so I'm continuing to work on that.

Good things that happened today:

• I completed my first ever library display! Compared to the amazing displays I have seen online, it's quite modest - but I'm quite proud of it, and hope that the Junior Primary (Gr 1 - 3) will enjoy it from tomorrow. Since I don't know our collection very well yet, I had to manually go through each shelf to find theme-appropriate books. At least doing that helped me improve my knowledge of the collection! Take a look (click to see full-size pics):

• I found three books (2 Roald Dahl, one JK Rowling) that we had thought lost. Yay! They've returned to their place on the shelves.
• The Grade Rs came for their first ever library visit. We hope to be doing more in the future.
• I introduced the second Grade 7 class to the concept of shelving the 826 (English Fiction) books according to the first three letters of the author's surname. Each girl got a book to re-shelf  Some girls enjoyed it so much that they asked to help me re-shelve the rest of the returns! They have got a little star next to their names on my potential student librarian candidates...