School Library
Students utilise the School's library on the Ground Floor of St Andrew's House. The Library contains a wide range of books, both academic and recreational, journals and reference material. There is a well equipped technology room attached to the Library with overhead data projection for demonstrations or student presentations. There are additional computers in the body of the Library available for class and student use. Reading and teaching areas, including a seminar room, are available for individual, small group and class use.
Senior College students also utilise the Senior College Learning Resource Centre which is equipped with a range of computer and information technology resources to support a high standard of individual and small group learning.
Students are encouraged to use electronic resources when researching assignments. Students can also access the internet. The guiding philosophy behind the Library is the development of students' learning skills and a love of reading and to provide a service that underpins the curriculum.
To promote a love of reading all students in Years 3 to 9 participate in a reading programme called Literature Circles. After selecting one title from a list of five or six books, students join a group of four or five other students who have read the same book.
Students decide how much they are going to read at home before their next meeting. They allocate a minimum of one half hour a night to develop the habit of reading every day. At regular meetings the students discuss what they have read and then reflect on it in a reading log which is collected and marked by the Library staff.
The School Library focuses on an information skills programme where students work through the six steps of the information process - defining, locating, selecting, organising, presenting, and evaluating - in across-the-curriculum student centred learning. These activities provide opportunities for students to use their full range of thinking skills, from the basic gathering of information to complex processes involving information evaluation and making judgments.
Library Teaching and Learning Policy 2008
Aim: To develop the skills for students to become life long independent learners and to ignite and/or foster a passion for learning and literature.
Objectives: In collaboration with classroom teachers to create, implement and assess stimulating units of work which give students opportunities to choose their preferred learning styles and which develop critical literacy and problem solving skills in the use of text, electronic and visual sources of information across the curriculum for Kindergarten to 12.
Actions: Units of work are based on the Bloom's Taxonomy of Thinking Skills to make explicit to students and teachers the underlying structure of the Information Process required to complete an information task which leads to the acquisition of knowledge.
Units of work are based on the information process to build a collection which is up-to-date, stimulating, attractive, balanced, inclusive and accessible and which responds to the academic and recreational needs of students.
Staff and student input highlights the use of respected professional journals for reviews of new resources while eliminating out of date or irrelevant non fiction books. The Library aims to provide students with opportunities for learning using dynamic, emerging technologies and to foster responsibility in the use of these decontextualised sources of information.
Year 7 Orientation for Year 7 students seeks to integrate technology into units of work co-written by library staff. Staff will undertake explicit teaching on ways to evaluate internet sites while developing a love of well written fiction and the habit to read every day.
Continue to develop the Literature Circles programme in which students have the opportunity to read and reflect on the best in children's, young adult and adult literature through which they will broaden and deepen their understanding of life. Library staff desire to create a library service in which the needs of teachers and students are paramount.
The Library will open from 8.45am to 5.00pm each day to provide a wide range of easily accessible academic and recreational resources for student and teacher use. The Library provides space where students can feel safe, welcome and stimulated and where different activities, both academic and recreational, take place.
The Library sets aside areas for specific groups of students to enjoy relaxed seating, to display student work, new resources and literature promotional material.
Ms Elizabeth Greef
Head Librarian
