St Francis Primary School - Library

Welcome to the Library

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Welcome to our library

Our school is lucky enough to house two libraries.
Our main library is situated just inside the school entrance with the key stage 1 library next to the River room.

We currently have over 8000 books and are constantly reviewing our stock to ensure that all children have something accessible and enjoyable to read.

Children in KS1 (years R to 2) may borrow two library books at a time and children in KS2 (years 3-6) are able to borrow three. Books should be returned within three weeks or be renewed if not finished.

Reading material

Non-fiction books covering a wide range of curriculum subjects and pupil interests.
Fiction books (shelved alphabetically by Author’s surname) including a Year 6 collection, with material suitable for, and designed to inspire children 11 up.
Newspapers
Comics
Audiobooks on CD
Picture books for all ages

Opening hours

We are open all school hours including lunch times.
We are also open until 4.00pm on Tuesdays so that parents can help their children to choose a book.

Librarians
Mrs Brown is our librarian who will be happy to help with any queries.

A team of keen school librarians who work in the library at lunch times and break assists her.

We are always interested to hear your ideas for the library and will try to accommodate book requests whenever we can. We are also interested to hear from any parents who would like to help out in the library.

Mystery Week 6/2/2012 - 10/2/2012

2012-01-06T11:45:00.004Z

CONGRATULATIONS TO MILLIE GATES IN YEAR 5, WINNER OF THE MYSTERY WEEK POSTER COMPETITION

We had over 50 enties to the competition and it was really difficult to pick the short list. Eventually six finalists were chosen across the year groups and the children voted for their favourite poster. A miniature copy will be sent home to everyone with details of Mystery Week events.
Every child entering the competetion earned their house five housepoints and the finalists earned ten. Millie has won £10 to spend in the book shop visiting next week.

Events During Mystery Week 6/2/2012 - 10/2/2012

Author Visits
Paul Cookson will be returning again and will be in school on Thursday 9th February. Paul’s books will be on sale in the bookshop on Wednesday should you wish to buy one and have it signed. We will also be welcoming a new face to St Francis, the storyteller and author Chris Connaughton. Chris will open Mystery Week on Monday 6th.

Book Sale
We will be holding a book sale on two evenings after school. Children will be given the opportunity to browse the books beforehand during the school day. Books start at £2.99.

Dance and Drama
We will be working with staff from The Point and Thornden School on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Charity Book Sale
Some of the children have suggested we hold a charity book sale. We will be asking children to bring in, with parents’ permission, a maximum of two books in good condition and age appropriate which will be sold in school for 20p a book. Books can be bought into school from Monday 6th and the sale will be held on Friday.

Dressing Up Day
Friday 10th will be dressing up day and we are asking children to come dressed as book characters. Their friend will have to guess who they are.

Competitions
There will be a number of competitions running during the week with a chance to win a Where’s Wally book.

We are anticipating a fun week with lots of activities for the children to enjoy.

Keep in touch with your library with a free app!

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The iMLS App allows staff, pupils and parents to access the school library from iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Schools using Junior Librarian.net can now ensure the library and its resources are accessible anywhere, anytime and available to your whole school community. The app is a fantastic way for children and parents to engage with reading.
Students can write reviews about books, websites and other resources using the App.
Search the library catalogue using the iMLS quick search to find books and websites to help with homework or general research or for the latest book by your favourite author. You can even watch fantastic videos of authors talking about their books in their own words.

Parents can track borrowing patterns for children with access to current and past loans information.

Using the 'ISBN Search' feature you can also check whether your school library has a copy of a book before buying it online or in a book store.

St. Francis Primary win a visit from Steve Cole

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On 19th October 2011 we were lucky enough to host a visit by the exuberant Steve Cole. Even luckier because the event came about by one of our pupils winning the visit for designing a new Astrosaur, a Munchersauraus. Emily Brine in year 5 became an official Astrosaur Superfan and won a complete collection of Astrosurs and Cows In Action books, all signed by Steve.

Emily said “it was fun and exciting to be there with him and I feel very lucky and privileged, also it was exciting to get 39 books!”
Steve wrote on his blog “And what a lovely school St. Francis is! As soon as I walked through the door the pupils were pointing and asking “Is that Steve Cole?” the whole school knew I was coming, the school newspaper editors were interviewing me and my robot pen received much admiration from passing children” He also says “it was really a fun event and afterwards the queue for books to be signed went on long after home time.”
Other comments from our children include “Funny, exciting and cool”, “weird and crazy”,” bonkers, fascinating and imaginative”, “awesome, hilarious, wacky and hyper”. I think it’s safe to say that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the day.

Read more about Steve's account of his visit ( and his Jammie Dodgers) on his website ht tp://www.stev ecolebooks.co.uk/ and go to his blog.

Helping Your Child to Read

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What you can do to encourage your child to read

Take time to enjoy books and stories with your child. Not only will it help them improve their reading, but it is a great opportunity to enjoy time together. Opening a book is like beginning an adventure- you never know what you might find inside.

You can also hear the phonics sounds at "Focus on Phonics"

Helping your child to read:

Read yourself! Set a good example by sharing your reading. Let your children see that you value books and keep them at home.
Keep books safe. Make your child their own special place to keep their books. Show them how to turn pages carefully.
Point out words all around you. Help your child to read the words around them: on food packets in the supermarket, on buses, in newspapers, in recipes.
Go to the Library together. Ask the librarian for help in finding books your children will enjoy. Why not let your child join the library and have their own library card? Don’t forget you can visit the school library on a Tuesday between 3.15 and 4.00pm every week. Mrs Brown will be there to help.
Make time to read. Try to read with your child at the same time every day. Bedtime is a great time to share a story. Why not let your child choose the story? Your child is never too old to enjoy a good story – keep reading to them even when they can read themselves.
Introduce your child to different types of books; classic fiction, chapter books, short stories, joke books, poetry, non-fiction.
Read slowly, with expression. Try using different and funny voices for characters.
Keep books in your bag. A long wait in a doctor’s surgery or at the bus stop can seem less boring if you share a book.
If English is not your family’s first language: You can buy dual language books. You can talk about books and stories in any language.

How to help with reading :

Look at the front cover and the pictures. Before you start reading talk about what the story might be about. Ask lots of questions about the pictures and the story as it progresses.

Spot words in books. How many times do familiar words come up?

Spot letters. Encourage your child to spot the letters of their names and the letters they are learning.

Turn off the TV! It’s easier for your child to concentrate on the story when there are no distractions.

Give them time. Let them make a guess before you tell them the word. Help them to get the first sound or try breaking the word up into smaller sections.

Let them pretend to read. Young children often like to pretend to read by making up the story themselves. This is a great start.

Teach them how to treat books. Teach your child how to hold books and turn the pages gently.

Let them read their favourites. Don’t worry if they want to read the same books over and over. It’s good practice.

Don’t read for too long. A good ten minutes is better than a difficult half hour.

If your child is too tired do not worry. Try again tomorrow.

Activities you can try at home:

Make puppets by cutting figures out of card or mismatched socks and use these as props for a story. You could also use your child’s toys and teddy bears.

Take photos of your family, holidays and fun days out and make them into your own books.

Keep books, magazines and newspapers around your home so you and your children will always have something to read.

Give children their own shopping lists when you go food shopping.

Make scrapbooks with your child about their favourite things, like TV characters, pop stars, football teams etc.

The Internet can be a great source of ideas and resources, for example:

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies
http://www.uptoten.com/
www.magickeys.com/books
www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/onlinestory.htm

Welcome back! Autumn 2011

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********Author Visit ********

What a start to the new year! Steve Cole will be visiting us on 19/10/11 and it's all thanks to Emily Brine.

Back in the summer term a number of children from St Francis entered a competition run by Random House Publishing to celebrate the publication of popular author Steve Cole’s 20th book. They were looking for the country’s biggest ‘Astrosaurs’ fans and the children were asked to design their own Astrosaurs character. The prize for the winning 20 superfans is a visit to their school from Steve Cole and a complete set of signed Astrosaurs books. We are delighted to tell you that Emily in year 5 is one of the 20 winning superfans with her ‘Munchasaurus’ and Steve Cole will be visiting St Francis on 19th October 2011 at 1.15pm.
You will be able to buy books and have them signed by Steve.
It promises to be a fun and entertaining afternoon.

Junior Librarian

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Dear Parents

We are excited to tell you that you can now access our school library system, Junior Librarian.net from home.

At present you can look at Junior Librarian in general, but in order to access your child’s account they will need a pin number. These will be issued to all children along with the Summer Reading Challenge in July.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do get in touch with the school.

You will be able to check which books your child has on loan (and any that are overdue!). You can see any new books that have arrived, check suitable websites to help with school projects and children can write reviews for books read. You can also explore the database to see which books are available in school, and reserve books your child would like to read, (up to two reservations at any one time).

To access Junior Librarian just click here

How to write a Review in Junior Librarian.net

1. In your web browser, log on to Junior librarian using the above link.

2. If asked to install silverlight , please do so.

3. Once installed (you may have to press the F5 key to refresh your page) you willreach the homepage of Junior Librarian.

4. Click on in the middle of the screen where it says REVIEW, and enter your PIN number which can be found on the front cover of the Reading Challenge booklet.

5. A list of all the school library books you have ever read will appear in alphabetical order. Click on the book you would like to review and then click on the button.

6. You will see a screen asking you some questions about the book. Answer the questions and when it is complete press publish. If you don't get time to complete it but wish to save your work so far press SAVE.
The review will be published for other children to see once it has been approved.

Spring Term 2011 in the Library

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World Book Day 3rd March 2011 with Andrew Norriss

Once again on World book day children in Key stage 2 were lucky enough to be joined by Andrew Norriss . Two years ago, on the day Ctrl Z was published, Andrew came to St Francis and the children were inspired and motivated to write by his talk. Andrew didn’t let us down this time and once again the children were delighted with Andrew’s stories and ideas. Year 5 were so enthusiastic they immediately returned to class to write a middle chapter for one of his books. Andrew then joined them in the classroom to read their efforts and was amazed they had managed to write a page so quickly. He told the children it sometimes took him a week to write a page!
Many of the children purchased books which were signed by Andrew following his presentations. Those who didn’t buy books were given a book mark or post card.

Since Andrew’s visit there has been great demand for his books in the library which are all readable fun adventure stories.

Andrew has written a number of children’s books including Aquila, Bernard’s Watch, The Touchstone and Ctrl Z. He has also written several popular TV series for children and adults including The Brittas Empire and Woof!.

Hampshire Picture Book Award

Children in year 1 took part in the first Hampshire Picture Book Award, which aims to introduce new picture books to these pupils, thereby extending their experience and developing a love of books.
The children were read the books in class and given time to enjoy the pictures over a period of six weeks. Each child then voted for their favourite book.

The books were

This is My Book by Mick Inkpen

What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson

The Loon on the Moon by Chae Strathie

My Mum has X-Ray Vision by Angela McAllister

It was a very close run thing but the winner by two votes was The Loon On The Moon, followed very closely by What The Ladybird Heard. All the books are now in the Key stage 1 library and are available to borrow.

Other Library News

During half term the library was decorated, and an updated computer system installed. The system is going down very well with the children who like the animated look of the screens. Eventually it will be accessible from home and children will be able to check on their books, write reviews and reserve books from their own computers. The system will also give access to hundreds of websites suitable for children to access which can be used to help with homework.

We have also received many new books for school thanks once again to parents purchasing Puffin books. A very big thank you also to Mrs Lambert who organises the book club so efficiently.

Fun at Wessex Book Festival November 2010

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St Francis played an active part in this years wonderful Wessex Children’s Book Festival, organised by the public and school library services. As well as hosting a visit by author and illustrator Tim Hopgood, Mrs Brown the librarian took groups of children to other schools to see Jeremy Strong, Julia Golding and Cressida Cowell.

The children thoroughly enjoyed their visits (and so did the parents who kindly helped out) and gained inspiration from listening to the authors.
Additionally some children went with their parents to see authors in Winchester during half term. They have come back with rave reviews about Emily Gravett, Jacqueline Wilson and Rick Riordan.

Class Library times 2011- 2012

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Every class has a dedicated time in the school library each week. During this session children are given time to change their books and browse the library. Children should try to remember to bring their library books to school on their designated day.
Library books must be returned or renewed after 3 weeks.
Children can also change their books at break or lunch time, between 12.00 and 12.30, on any day of the week.

Class days

RCW Monday
RPS Wednesday
1FK/SM Tuesday
1KL Tuesday
2EH Thursday
2LC Friday
3EG/SD Wednesday
3RC Wednesday
4RF Friday
4VH Thursday
5KW Monday
5KP Thursday
6DJ Tuesday
6KT Tuesday

Library News Autumn 2010

2010-09-17T11:21:00.001+01:00

Welcome back to another year in the school library!

We have lots of exciting activities planned for the Autumn term.
Coming up at half term is a fantastic event organised by the School Library Service.

The Wessex Children’s Book Festival 2010

Based mostly in the Winchester Discovery Centre the festival will be hosting many of our top children’s authors and your favourite may well be among them. They include
Anthony Browne, Jacqueline Wilson, Lauren Child, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, Emily Gravett, Nick Butterworth, Ali Sparkes, Kaye Umansky, Morris Gleitzman, and Steve Cole to name but a few!

Some authors will also be visiting schools and we will be hosting a talk by Tim Hopgood, author and illustrator of Here Comes Frankie runner up in last years Hampshire Illustrated Book Award. We have also secured a small number of tickets to see Cressida Cowell, Jeremy Strong and Julia Golding in other Hampshire schools so some lucky children will be enjoying a visit to see these authors. Details to follow.

More information about the festival can be found at www.hants.gov.uk/sls and look for the link on the left hand side to Wessex Book Festival.

E-books

We are hoping to run a book club to trial the use of e-books on Nintendo DS. We will be getting the “books” from the School Library Service and the children involved will need to use their own Nintendos. It will be interesting to see what they think about reading with new technology.

New books

We have a number of new books in the library-both fiction and non-fiction and a number of new titles for year 6. We are expecting some more shortly thanks to the tokens collected from all those Shredded Wheat and Cheerios packets. Many thanks for collecting these for the school. The scheme will be running again this year and there is a collection box for the tokens in the link.

Don’t forget we are open after school until 4.00pm on a Tuesday evening. Parents are welcome to come and browse the selection of books available to the children.

Update on Reading For Fun Week 2010

2010-03-16T14:27:00.016Z

Ali Sparkes returns to St Francis

We were lucky to have Ali back again the week after SATs to do an X factor writing workshop with year 6. The morning involved voting on Ali's books from reading the blurb and opening sentence and assessing the cover. Ali's new book Wishful Thinking, to be published in July, won the vote.
Then the children worked in groups to come up with their own story beginning and blurb and voted for their favourite. It was a very close contest between I've Lost My Head and Consequences.

The children were very inspired and came up with some fantastic story ideas-there are definitely some budding writers in year 6.

Reading For Fun Week got off to a fantastic start when we welcomed local author Ali Sparkes to our school first thing on Monday morning. Ali inspired the children with ideas for their writing and played a number of games with them involving the power of description. Unfortunately due to a pressing engagement in London, Ali was unable to stay for the afternoon and is rescheduling some time to return to school and work with year 6. The children were however able to see Ali on Blue Peter the following evening when she was presented with the Blue Peter Book Award for Frozen In Time in the category “book I couldn’t put down”.
Ali returned to school on 2nd March to sign her books bought by the children during the Book Fair and the following day we learned on Blue Peter that Ali’s book was the overall winner of the Blue Peter Book of the Year.

The Book Fair was very successful and thanks to the generosity of parents raised over £1000 in books for the school.

Throughout the week we collected books for children in Africa. The husband of a staff member has links to a charity in Kenya (through the local Fire Brigade) and came into school to tell the children about the charity’s work. The children put a book plate into their books to explain why they thought the book would be enjoyed.

We held a Get Caught Reading raffle throughout the week where children were given a raffle ticket if they were seen reading. A draw was made at the end of the week and two lucky children won a £5 book token each.

The culmination of the week was a dressing up day when children (and staff) came to school dressed as a book character. Everyone made a tremendous effort with characters as diverse as Harry Potter and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a collection of Mr Men, Tracey Beaker and Percy Jackson. The staff even provided a pack of (almost 101) dalmations that ran amok during

assembly!

Anthony Browne the Children's Laureate at St Francis

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Children’s Laureate at St Francis

What a start to our library activities this year!

We were thrilled to welcome the internationally acclaimed, award winning author and illustrator Anthony Browne to our school on 16th September. Anthony was named as the sixth Children’s Laureate in June and this was his first school visit in Hampshire since his appointment.

Pupils in both years 2 and 6 study Anthony’s work in depth and were able to quiz him on his books and famous characters.

Anthony produces some of our best loved picture books and said on his appointment as laureate:

“Picture books are special-they’re not like anything else. Sometimes I hear parents encouraging their children to read what they call proper books (books without pictures), at an earlier age. This makes me sad, as picture books are perfect for sharing, and not just with the youngest children. As a father, I understand the importance of the bond that develops through reading picture books with your child.

We have in Britain some of the best picture book makers in the world, and I want to see their books appreciated for what they are – works of art.”

Pupils were able to purchase one of Anthony’s books and have it signed by him. He also took great care to draw each child an individual picture.

Hampshire Illustrated Book Award 2009

Year 5 will once again be judges in this award designed to recognise outstanding picture books. The shortlisted books have now arrived and are being studied by our judges. They are

Don't Read This Book by Deborah Allwright

Stone age Boy by Satoshi Kitamura

Here Comes Frankie by Tim Hopgood

Robot and The Bluebird by David Lucas

The Boy the Bear the Baron and the Bard by Gregory Rogers

Wonderful Life by Helen Ward

For more information abouth the book award visit www.hants.gov.uk/sls

Get Caught Reading 2009

Yes we have some great photograhs of children and staff reading in the holidays-why not pop into the libaray and have a look-remember we are open until 4.00pm on Tuesdays.

It’s back! Our Get Reading Challenge of 2008 produced a fantastic collection of pictures of you reading in weird and wonderful places-underwater, in giant bubbles and even in prison! This year we hope to do even better, so bring in your photos of you reading in strange and exotic places and we will display them in the library in September.

Premier League Reading Stars ChallengeDuring the Summer term and despite SAT’s, 12 year six boys have taken the Premier League Reading Stars Challenge. This involved reading 100 books between them as quickly as possible. The boys achieved their goal in 10 weeks and have been promised an extra game of football as a reward. They will also be entered into a drawer to receive Premier league goodies. For more information about the scheme log onto http://www.footballfoundation.org.uk/ .

Box Tops for Books

Thank you so much for continuing to collect Box Tops for Books tokens from serial packets. We have received over 35 quality books for the library this term as a result. We are also collecting Books for Schools vouchers from The Times and will be ordering from their collection shortly.

Spring Term 2009

St Francis Primary was lucky to be invited to Thornden School on Friday 27th February to hear Morris Gleitzman talk about his work along with other children from years 6 to 8. Morris is the very popular Australian author of such books as ‘Toad Rage,’ ‘Blabber Mouth’ and Two Weeks with the Queen’.
He talked about his brilliant if sometimes disturbing new book ‘Then’ which continues the story of ‘Once’ a moving and convincing child’s eye view of what happened to the children of Poland after the Germans invaded in World War 2.

He entertained us by sharing with us how his best subject at school was day dreaming and how useful that has been in his chosen career. He reminded children of the key thing we needed to know about a character to write a good story- what was their problem.

Many of the children bought books and Morris signed them personally with Australian greetings!

World Book Day 5th March 2009

There was great excitement at St Francis on 5th March World Book Day when award winning author Andrew Norriss visited the school to spend some time with years 5 and 6. The visit was doubly exciting as it coincided with the publication of Andrew’s latest novel CtrlZ. CtrlzZ is about a boy called Alex who is given a computer by his godfather. However the CtrlZ buttons on this computer can undo rather more than a typing error. It can take you back in time to before you made any sort of mistake. Sort of useful when you’re 11….
A year 6 pupil said ”Ctrl-Z is a great idea, no-one has written a book like that before” and another added “It doesn’t give too much away in chapter 1 and I can’t wait to see what happens in the rest of the book”.

Andrew spoke to the children about his books and the inspiration for his stories, as well as signing copies, and book-marks for all the children. One pupil commented “It’s fun to have a real live author at school and learn about things they’ve done.”

The children spent the afternoon in house groups designing book covers for A World Book Day competition and brought in copies of their favourite books to share with their friends.

Book Fair

Following World Book day we hosted a book fair which proved extremely popular with both children and parents.

Thanks to your generosity we have been able to order over £1000 worth of free books for the library.

December 2008
Hampshire Illustrated Book Award

Judging for the Hampshire Illustrated Book Award is now complete and year 5 have enjoyed assessing the short-listed books. The favourite book in our school proved to be Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett but the overall county winner was Scoop an exclusive by Monty Molenski written by John Kelly and Cathy Tincknell. Please see the Hampshire Illustrated Book Award page for details of all this year’s books.

Boys Into Books

This year in The National Year of Reading, the government have funded a scheme to provide books for boys aged 5 –11.The idea is to support the reading needs of boys in KS1 and KS2 with titles that might attract and enthuse them about reading for pleasure.
We have received a pack of 50 books from the School Library Service as a result of this scheme and we are supplementing them with a selection of new books boys might enjoy.
Parents please feel free to come in and browse the books yourselves.

Remember we are open until 4.00pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Get Caught Reading

Our Get Caught Reading challenge produced an amazing display of photographs-beaches, caves, boats, in prison and even one with the Queen! They are now in an album available to view in the library.
Do come in and have a look.

Shoo rayner visits St. Francis

Shoo Rayner author of 110 childrens books visited school in November to entertain year 2 . We were joined by pupils from Durley and Cherbourg and many children took the opportunity to buy personally signed books. You can find out more about Shoo (why is he called Shoo?) at http://www.shoo-rayner.co.uk/. His website is full of entertainment with games activities, downloads and lots of information about him and his books.

Shoo’s visit was part of the Wessex Children’s book festival which took place all over the county from 24/11/08-30/11/08 and culminated in a Family Gala Weekend on 29th and 30th November at The Guildhall in Winchester. Authors such as Malorie Blackman, Terry Pratchett, Anthony Browne and Chris Riddell appeared in person to talk to pupils and parents. For more information about this fantastic event log on to www.hants.gov.uk/sls.

And don’t forget the library is open until 4.00pm

on Tuesdays and Thursdays