“Easy Street” – Decorated (Part 6a)

As an addition to A School Library Transformed – Part 6: Easy Street, I’ll show you some pictures of the area now that it’s decorated. I regret that there are no children in the picture – what’s a school library without the kids? – but FOIP privacy regulations do not allow it.

Easy Street from the circulation desk

The Canada and the World Island is on the far side of Easy Street. I replaced the plexiglass displayers on the slatwall stack-end with plastic ones because 2 got broken last year.

The border helps to camouflage the back of the ‘World’ Island stacks.

This side is against my office

Primary periodicals are on the shelves and I use the top sections for library class books and materials. I’m not sure if the donated tiered shelf is staying there or not, but you can’t have too much face-out display.

The smart board looks awful when I don’t have anything on it. The border helps a little. I often project a revolving slide show of reading pictures or photos of the students, but it’s a distraction when I have students working in the library. The thing beneath the smart board is just covered cardboard boxes, but I’ve submitted a request to have a trunk built, with a sloped lid for book display in which I’ll store the puppets.

My next request will be a stand/cupboard of some sort for the computer, ‘Sad Books’*, the ‘No, No, Never’ pail**, the Spacer*** box and other library class paraphernalia. The carpet, sponsored by a local business is awesome, but the space is a little too small for 25+ students once they get to about grade 4. Luckily there is a nice open space between Easy Street and the circulation desk were they can sit when we want to gather. All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with it and the kids love it, which is all that really matters.

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* Sad Books are books that have had to be discarded because of their condition. There are examples of mouldy, torn, cut-out, dog-eared and other very sad books that I show the little ones so that they can see for themselves books that they can no longer check out (I try to choose tempting ones) because of improper treatment.

**The “No, No, Never” pail contains items that when revealed the kids love to be able to call out ‘No, No, Never’ or ‘Happy Mr. Wiggle‘ when they discern whether or not an item (sizzors, bookmarks, glue, book bag, etc.) should be used with library books.

***Spacers are numbered, 10x30cm strips of coloured corrugated plastic that our students are taught to use to hold the place of the book they are looking at. Other libraries call them different things. What do you call yours?

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Read the whole series of the transformation of my K-12 library to a modified bookstore model here.