Tag: DEAR

Booky day

My day started early with a visit to the Geylang branch of the NLB.  There we met with the person in charge of the DEAR books and went through our needs.

We decided to concentrate on the first two units of enquiry for the PYP and MYP programmes, as we were not sure how long it would take for delivery.

The first units are as follows:

Nursery-K1 & P2-P4 & P6:  Who we Are
K2 & P5: Where we Are in Place and Time
P1: How we organise ourselves

Starting in Nursery, and getting more complex as the children move up through the school, the “who we are” units focus on the self, friendships, beliefs, rights and responsibilities, and cultural values.

On the other hand “How we organise ourselves” has to do with structures and procedures and “Where we are in Place and Time” looks at evolution of things through history, for the K2’s that involves toys and games, and for the P4 students taking a look at past civilizations, systems and technologies.

The second units involve the following:

Nursery: How we express ourselves
K1: How the world works
K2, P1&P5: Who We Are
P2-4 & P6: Where we Are in Place and Time

The nursery students look at how feelings are expressed, while K1 is busy with the weather and how it shapes the lives of people.
The groups looking at “who we are” are covering a wide range of age-appropriate topics starting with health and taking care of your body, relationships with other people, and attitudes and choices.  While “where we are” examines family histories, exploration, tools and migration.

Quite a wide range of very diverse topics!  The challenge is to match the topics with the Dewey Decimal Classification system so you know where to look for what you need.  Some things are obvious – like looking in the 930’s for ancient civilizations.  Others are a little less obvious – for example cultural aspects are spread between geography, history, art, music etc.

After I’m finished, I go off to do some volunteer work at a second hand shop.  There I find piles of books about to be dumped.   Before you get all upset about the dumping thing – as you may have read previously books in a sad state of humidity and mold are both a health hazard and a hazard to other “healthy” books.  So one has to be cruel to be kind.
So I quickly snap a shot and sms Ms. Katie – is she interested?  Yes definitely as some books are fashion and culture related to the 60’s and she has some IB EE (International Baccalaureate, Extended Essay) students who would love to access them.  Others will be a useful addition to the school collection and still others, which are in really bad condition will be cut up by the design and technology and art students for their projects.

When I finish my shift, I load up the books and am greeted by some very enthusiastic IB students who “ooh” and “aah” over my cache.

Presentation of the plan

Today was the day to present the plan!  But first we spent some time going around the school meeting teachers and heads of department and finding out the scheduling of the various units of enquiry, which units were to be studied and what the information needs would be.  Our first concrete action was going to be getting a selection of books from the NLB through their DEAR scheme.

The DEAR scheme is a bulk lending programme, whereby:

    “The NLB welcomes schools and learning centres, social, welfare, and community organisations which are embarking on the promotion of reading initiatives to borrow books in bulk for their members’ use. This service, called DEAR@Schools and DEAR@Community, is provided free of charge and subjected for renewal on a yearly basis.

    All DEAR@Schools and DEAR@Community members are entitled to borrow up to a maximum of 2,000 books for a loan period of 84 days (12 weeks).”

For a school on a limited budget and limited resources (physical and staffing) this is a great way to get resources up and running in a short time frame. 

Then the meeting with the Head of School (HOS) to see if we had support for our ambitious plans!   Luckily we did, however, not everything could be achieved at once, so we needed to work step-by-step.
The first priority was ordering the books the teachers needed for delivery as soon as possible.  We’d arranged a slot with the NLB to do that tomorrow.  Then while we are waiting for the book delivery we have to work hard to make sure we have the physical space and the logistics in place for receiving, storing, disbursing, returning and sending the books back to the NLB.