You-Time in the Library

My school has an extra-curricular period known as "You-Time." This period comes after the end of the school day, and allows students to explore their interests in a variety of weekly activities. It is required that students choose something for at least one day per week, but most find multiple activities they enjoy before they leave school to go home and study, have music lessons, etc. (One of my Year 4 students would say he goes home to play video games. 😒)

Teachers volunteer for the You-Time activity that fits their interests. Some work in pairs, while others work by themselves with a smaller group. Karate, digital story-telling, Scouting, breakout boxes, origami...With dozens of choices besides sports for the older students, there is definitely something for everyone.

So what does the Library offer?

Well, my initial thought was to have Battle of the Books, similar to the NCSLMA rules, for Junior and for Senior Schools. Students are in one of 6 houses (just like in Harry Potter except these are named for Nobel Peace Prize Winners, and none are "evil") so inter-house competitions would allow students to earn house points. HOWEVER, the library did not open from its renovations until October. At that point, there was still a lot of things being changed or altered. Evenings and weekends still had construction workers in the library, and time was not my own.

Fast-forward to now: since I now understand how the purchasing system works, I know we would be unable to get multiple copies of books here, have students read them, develop questions, practice some game rounds, and have the competitions before the end of the school year. I will be ordering some books this year so we can start in August.  Instead of BOB, we have soon-to-be four activities each week. Two of these are You-Time. (The others are English Storytelling and Thai Storytelling.)

The first You-Time is Breakout Boxes. Teachers check these out to use with their classes, but in the library, a group of Junior School students also enjoys them every Wednesday. They struggle sometimes to solve the puzzles due to over-thinking things, but they are always eager to open that last lock and to learn what is in the box. This is run by the librarian, Miss Marivic, who is from the Philippines and has been at the school almost since it opened. (She is my right hand, and sometimes my left too! If you haven't been paying attention, I am the Director of Librarian Services, Marivic is my librarian, and then I have library assistants and an intern.)

You-Time is about to start anew (students change their activities periodically), and the library will also be offering Stop-Motion Animation! We have a set of iPads with the Stikbot app now, and rather than start BOB without being able to complete the competitions, this is what I will direct and mentor students doing. I am very excited about this, and hopefully students will be too.