#TheLibraryLife - Life in the LASS LLC 2019-2020

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October is our annual trip to McMaster University for their campus tour and library workshop!  Our students learn so much about #universitylife and what it takes to be successful in that environment.  It's always a popular trip for our students!

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One again we were fortunate enough to have Mr. Mark Newman, author of the Sooper Yooper, to teach our Geography students about the dangers of invasive species.  Always a fan favourite in the #LASSLLC.

Not only did we lead PD, we attended a lot of it as well!  Distance learning provided many opportunities for the LLC team to learn and grow, especially in the areas of equity, technology and assessment.  

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January was a busy month in the LASS LLC as things were winding down for the semester. Students were working on summatives or were preparing for their exams and teachers were hustling to get through the last of the course material. The team in the LASS LLC continued to be supportive of staff and students right up until the end of a busy first semester!

With so many wonderful women to celebrate, the Women's History Month display board was filled to the brim with amazing Canadian women!

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Our students soar to success with Sora and we really encouraged our students to get ready and get reading this school year!

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This was our first year collaborating with the business department to take our students to Algoma University (Brampton Campus) to engage in their Introduction to Business workshop. Our students got to participate in a university lesson and put their marketing skills to work in a sales challenge. Our winners featured here were all smiles!

Although we have adult colouring books, we wanted a collective way for students to contribute to a design that we could eventually frame and hang in the LLC.  Team work makes the dream work!

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Back by popular demand....it's Blind Date with a Book! Staff and students fell in love with our mystery books and they took a minute to "rate their date" for a chance to win a movie night out on us!

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In October we were able to get our Makerspace Corner set up! We have puzzles, adult colouring, origami, knitting, painting, lego, keva strips and more. It has been a hit with our students as they can just grab and activity and go. Great for stress release and relaxation!

Friday March 13 we thought we were leaving the LLC for an extended March Break and that we would be returning in three weeks. Little did we know that we would not return for the rest of the school year. That didn't stop us from supporting staff and students in distance learning. We took our LLC virtually and this is a record of what we did during the pandemic.

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#TheLibraryLife - News From Your Library Learning Commons: The Saga Continues

February is when we kicked off our database boot camp! This was created after we noticed that students were still struggling with effectively using the databases to conduct research. After early promotion with the staff we had over 25 classes sign up!  Check out the data from out adventures below:

Database Survey Results Summary Report.pdf

These buttons were made using our button maker in the LASS LLC! Thanks Ms. Niro!

We were able to rearrange the LLC a bit to be able to have a dedicated makerspace corner.  Students are able to help themselves to a variety of activities that promote creative thinking and support good mental health and well being.  Puzzles have been really popular!

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Our Milk Bag Mat Club was also back up and running the first Wednesday in September. These dedicated students are also superheros because they are making a difference for so many who need sleeping mats around the world! Superheros unite in the #LASSLLC!

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Tis the season to be jolly....and kind!  As the holiday season came upon us, we had big dreams of changing the world for the better.  We made a countdown calendar of kind acts to help inspire staff and students to take care of one another.

Don't forget...be a Bookworm like your LLC Team!

In the LASS LLC we have snow many books! We love to use our display boards to promote new books that we have recently purchased for our students!

Each year we celebrate Freedom to Read Week! Because you've gotta fight...for your right....to read books!

For some reason, November was an exceptionally busy month (despite September and October being a whirlwind)! There were a lot of things to celebrate, guest presentations, field trips to feeder schools and CPR instruction with the leadership classes! So November had us running out of gas by the end of the month!

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One of our goals for this year was to have our DDR students more involved in #thelibrarylife so we had them down for some construction maker activities this month! Check out the amazing house that Alden built! #wearemakers

March Madness (and things went really mad)

When we make our milk bag mats, no part of the milk bag is wasted!  We use the scraps to make pillows that we also send with our mats to people in need.  I get to put my Family Studies skills to use as I sew up our pillows.

We had some team building makerspace fun with Ms. Rehal's ESL class!

The makerspace magic continued in March as Ms. Rehal's class returned for another fun session in the LASS LLC!

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All of what happens in the LLC would not be possible with the ongoing support of our amazing colleagues and administration. We tried a lot of new things this year and we were so pleased at the enthusiastic participation we had from our stakeholders. Every year we continue to evolve, learn and grow and we stay inspired by those around us. The saga of the LASS LLC marches on....to be continued. With eternal thanks, gratitude and love, Jonelle, Chrissy and Jennifer

Our story begins where it always does....in the Library Learning Commons at LASS. The cast of characters was also the same for Semester 1. The superhero group of Ms. St. Aubyn, Ms. Niro and Mrs. Armstrong (also known as Team Awesome) started their planning and preparation during the summer to be ready for September! The location and the characters of this story may have remained the same but what happened here was new and exciting! This September we totally revamped our Grade 9 Orientation to include more games, more prizes and more fun! Using Flipgrip, Kahoot, Sora, Breakout Boxes and Crossword puzzles, we were able to introduce future technology and tools to our great grade 9s!

Occasionally I write blog posts for 49th Teachers and I participated in their #TeacherDiary series by writing about my concerns with equity and distance learning. You can check out the blog post here: <a href="https://kids.49thshelf.com/Blog/2020/04/09/COVID-19-Teacher-Diary-Equity-Access-for-All-Students">https://kids.49thshelf.com/Blog/2020/04/09/COVID-19-Teacher-Diary-Equity-Access-for-All-Students</a>

Before the pandemic hit we had hoped to have some author visits with our students.  Thankfully the authors still agreed to participate via Zoom with the teachers.  Jesse Thistle and Senator Patti La-Boucane Benson shared their stories and wisdom with staff all across the Peel District School Board.

On February 19th, for the first time ever, we celebrated I Read Canadian Day! This was a wonderful event in which both staff and students got in the spirit and focused on reading books by some diverse Canadian authors. The following pictures are a great reminder of what an awesome day it was.

This September we wanted our students to "fall" in love with their library learning commons!

We had classes inside and outside of the LLC reading Canadian!

As a certified CPR instructor, I partner each year with our SHSM Arts and Hospitality program students, as well as our Leadership classes to train and certify students in Standard First Aid and CPR.  November is when we run our training.  You never know when you might need to save a life!

The Legacy Schools program is a free national initiative to engage, empower and connect students and educators to further reconciliation through awareness, education and action (#reconciliACTION). This year, Louise Arbour proudly became a Legacy School!

During the pandemic, I had an opportunity to participate in a number of podcasts on voice.ed radio with the fabulous Alanna King!  Check out episodes 4a and 4b and episode 33 in the link below:

Read Into This – Canadian School Libraries Podcasts

1. Student Voice and Choice - We will be continuing to work with the Leadership classes and other students to include their ideas in the operations of the LLC. 2. Video Game Room - We are pleased to announce the introduction of the lunch time gaming room! Students will have an opportunity to sign up through the LLC to play video games in our new multimedia room. 3. The OLA Super Conference - We hope to be presenting the Human Library at the OLA Super Conference in the upcoming school year. 4. Data Collection - We found that data collection really helped to inform our practice we did the database boot camp so we have plans to increase our data collection. Our first project will revolve around improving our makerspace!

Every Child Matters - That is the idea behind Orange Shirt day. Orange Shirt Day (September 30th) is a day when we honour the Indigenous children who were sent away to residential schools in Canada and learn more about the history of those schools. We used our button maker to make the buttons we handed out this year.

Participants in the Human Library were: Pam Strong - Equity Resource Teacher Officers Josh and Deji - Our NPU officers Regan Cheney - LASS Teacher and Cancer Survivor June Rowe - Heart Transplant Recipient Althea Jones - Midwife Jasmin Pannu - Artist Peter Bovolaneas-Mirra - Two Time Testicular Cancer Survivor Christine Koch - Living with MS Johanna Downey - Politician Filiz Ozmisir - Health Care Provider and Refugee Settlement Worker Nicole Brewster Mercury - Producer at CBC and Wedding Planner

This November our Milk Bag Mat Club leaders took the show on the road to our friends at Hewson P.S. to help train their students on how to make milk bag mats. Our students and their students loved the experience!

Our staff love to read Canadian books as well!

We kicked off the new year with a look at the best YA books of the decade according to Buzzfeed! Love it or hate it, agree or disagree, we had all the books in the LASS LLC!

Mark V. Campbell is a DJ, scholar, University of Toronto professor and curator. Mark is also the founder at Northside Hip Hop Archive in 2010 and Mark has spent two decades embedded within the&nbsp;Toronto hip hop scene. Mark gave our students a brief education about hip hop culture and graciously donated his book for our collection. This presentation was enjoyed by our Grade 12 English classes.

We celebrated another first in the #LASSLLC....Hindu Heritage Month! While creating this display board we learned many new things about the Hindu religion and the impact it has had on the world!

Although we didn't get to officially celebrate this day in the LLC thanks to COVID-19, we did have our display board up early enough to promote it.  It's not enough to be not racist, we need to be anti-racist!

The LLC Team worked together to produce a distance learning resource to assist teachers in their transition to this new world of teaching. The site was updated regularly to include information that we felt would be most helpful to teachers.

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We love to laugh in the LLC! So we mixed in a little humor with our romance novels. Feel the love!

This year we hosted our first Human Library here in the #LASSLLC and it was a dream come true!  Both the students and the participants loved the event and it was a great learning experience for everyone. The goal of a Human Library is to break down stigma and stereotypes around certain groups and/or individuals to create a culture of acceptance, empathy and understanding.  The photos that follow are from that wonderful day!

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Our Best Buddies love to read Canadian with Ms. Niro in the LLC!

Mark Newman was so good we had to have him back for round 2!  This time our Best Buddies got to enjoy his presentation and they loved it!! #lampreypie 

After we learned that the return to school was going to be longer than initially planned, we started putting out weekly updates with tips and tricks for teachers to help with distance learning, equity resources and fun things to do with students and their own families. We started releasing weekly updates starting on Monday, April 13th and we never stopped!  Check out Week 3 in the link below:

Week 3 Library Learning Commons Update.pdf

In addition to the weekly updates, we started hosting online PD in the form off "snack and learns" that staff could attend to increase their comfort level with technology that would be helpful to them during distance learning. Sora and Flipgrid were our first two but we didn't have a slide deck for those. We did have a Smore for the Sora app. Check it out here: <a href="https://www.smore.com/wjc64">https://www.smore.com/wjc64</a>. However, Ms. Niro prepared some awesome slides for the ones that came after! Her snack and learns were extremely popular! Check them out by using the following: <a href="https://bit.ly/GSBoards">https://bit.ly/GSBoards</a> <a href="https://bit.ly/Audio-Narration">https://bit.ly/Audio-Narration</a> <a href="https://bit.ly/BeyondKahoot">https://bit.ly/BeyondKahoot</a> <a href="https://bit.ly/Slides-Jamboard">https://bit.ly/Slides-Jamboard</a>

Friday March 13 - The beginning of the pandemic panic!

This is the fifth year of the Festival of Literary Diversity (the FOLD) and we were happy to yet again promote their annual reading challenge. Students and staff were encouraged to participate this event and support the FOLD!

In the LASS LLC we proudly celebrate Black History Month.  Through our books, displays and presentations, we celebrate the achievements of Black Canadians and share their stories.

As we approach exams in January, we encourage our students to keep calm and study on! It can be a challenging time for many students but we are there for them.

Last school year we celebrated Indigenous History Month in June. This school year we celebrated Indigenous Heritage Month in November. Our display was based on the graphic novel "This Place: 150 Years Retold" which covers the history of Indigenous People in Canada.

Like September, October was a month where we had to hustle to get everything done! It was also our first time celebrating Islamic Heritage Month here in the #LASSLLC!

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