Our library has been open most of the school year as we have been back to school, face-to-face with our students and teachers since August. As more and more of us go back to school, a lot of you have asked for tips as our kids come back to the library and what it looks like at our school.
As we shared these new guidelines and procedures with our students, we made sure to communicate them with our teachers too. We made posters and had the teachers post them in the classrooms. We made little My Destiny Library Shopping List slips and gave each teacher a stack to have on hand. And most of all, we made sure everyone felt welcome, safe and excited to be back in our library.
Here are 6 tips that really helped us as our kids came back to the library. I hope they are helpful for you and your school community too.
1. We are doing everything we can to keep our students safe with these little reminder posters and the procedures we have put into place. We have hand sanitizer stations at both doors for everyone to use as they come into the library.
The posters also let them know it is important to wear your mask at all times in the library, just like they do throughout the school day.
We also clean the tables and surfaces with disinfectant throughout the day.
2. We encourage everyone to use their eyes (or their Destiny Shopping list, which is Tip 3) to look for books and only pick up the books they'd like to check out.
They can look on the shelves for books...
...and we have books spread out this year on the tables in the library too.
This is especially helpful for our youngest readers as it gives them lots of choices. Mrs. Hockenberry changes the books on the tables throughout the week.
As they find a book with their eyes, they can take it off the shelf or...
...ask their teacher or one of us for help.
Once they have their books,
they check them out with Mrs. Hockenberry, just like they always have.
3. They also use their My Destiny Library Shopping List to find books in the library.
Earlier this school year, in this post, I shared how we are using Destiny Discover and little shopping lists for the kids to write down the books they want to find in the library. This is going great and the kids really enjoy using Destiny to find what they want before they come to the library.
They love bringing their Destiny Library Shopping Lists to the library...
...and keep them handy in their classrooms too.
Seeing this little My Destiny Library Shopping List on the side of a desk, waiting to be filled out, made my day. The 3rd grader told me she puts a new one up each week to write down what she’s going to shop for next time in the library.
4. It's also helpful to have them bring their Chromebooks to use Destiny Discover in the library if they'd like to find and read more about books they want to check out.
Since we are not using community computers, this is a handy way for them to still use Destiny.
5. As the library books come back and get checked in, all books go into quarantine. It has been super helpful with the new quarantine features in Destiny to organize the quarantine process.
This was easy to set up. I will be sharing how we did this in an upcoming post and video tutorial next week.
6. The most important tip is to continue to have fun and make your library a place all students and teachers feel welcome, happy and at home. This is our library, the heart of the school community, and we always want our readers to remember how much we love having them in the library.
Even though it might look a little different this year, our library and library program continue to shine, no matter what it looks like or where we are throughout the year.
It means everything to our kids and everything to us as teachers and librarians too.
I also wanted to share the library posters from this post so you can use the templates to make them for your library too. You will find all four of these, plus the one at the top of this post,
in this Buncee.
There are tons of super cute poster templates that makes it very easy...
...to create posters, postcards and all things for your library.
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