Laurence Library

Love Your Library

This week the WACE examinations are underway. The Library has been busy after school with students working closely with teaching staff to prepare for their examination. Homework Club has been well attended as students finish assignments and start revising for the end of year examinations. Library staff have also been busy with preparation for 2024. Book lists closed for input from Heads of Learning area and will be finalised by the end of this week. The book list will be released to parents later in November.

Reading classes continue to delight us with constant borrowing. To fuel the increasing demand, we have ordered new books for the Library. This order includes completing series and adding new publications for our students. Hopefully these books will be on our shelves very soon.

We have been featuring some interesting displays of books. We recently had a display of “Banned Books”. The National Library of Australia supplied a list of banned books and information about the history of censorship. Students were fascinated by the variety of books and the reasons for them being banned. Australia has an extensive list of previously banned books that were once considered a threat to the nation’s morals and literary standards.

Following this we had a special display for Halloween. Again, these books attracted attention, and many were borrowed. Students are encouraged to write reviews of the books they borrow on the Library admin system, Oliver. We are currently featuring books and reviews by our readers on the Library eboard. It is very helpful for students to see what their peers are reading and finding interesting. Also featured are fragments of Year 8 genre writing. These are clips from some wonderful short stories submitted in English classes from this year group.

We have also been featuring extracts from Year 8 and Year 9 creative writing classes. Year 8 students’ brief was to write a 500-word extract of their choice of genre from a choice of fantasy, murder mystery or romance. Year 9 students were briefed to create their own original dystopian short story. These extracts are fascinating to read. We are getting very positive feedback from students who have seen them.

Last week the missing pieces for the Lego Millennium Falcon arrived. This has meant construction has restarted. We are hoping this project will be finished by the end of the school year. Many hours of work are going into this project.

Dr Annette Pedersen

Library Coordinator