Carson City schools celebrate National School Library month, gear up for School Library week
In honor of National School Library month, which takes place throughout April, as well as National Library Week, which takes place April 23-29, Carson City librarians are celebrating with a number of activities for their students.
This is the 38th annual celebration, which will lead up to Nevada Reading Week in the first week of March.
The theme for the National Library Week is: There’s more to the story.
“I think that’s apropos because there is more to the story, there’s more than what you traditionally have as a view of the library,” said School Library Media Specialist and Carson High School librarian Ananda Campbell who led the presentation. “Our libraries are definitely spaces where active, engaging learning is happening.”
Each elementary school has incorporated some type of MakerSpace into their libraries to engage students.
“They’re really a place for students to build, to explore, to create, to innovate, and thankfully through some grants and fundraising every elementary school has had to opportunity to create some type of MakerSpace,” Campbell said.
Library budgets come directly from book fair sales, and many school libraries reported a significant increase in sales this year.
All libraries, whether grade school or upper levels, have been engaging in making connections with the community, whether with the Carson City library, pre-K groups, or community members.
Elementary Schools
At Seeliger Elementary, students had a number of activities offered to help celebrate the month, including MakerSpace creations with Dominoes and Quiet Reading Time for Kinders thanks to Librarian Connie Fronapfel.
At Bordewich Bray Elementary, librarian Megan Garcia provides hands-on activities for students after each book they read including puppet making for their very own puppet theater.
At Empire Elementary, librarian Patrick Wiggins has provided a lifecycle study, where students were able to incubate and hatch their very own chickens.
At Fritsch Elementary, students engaged in their new STEAM room, held a reading week contest and Tournament of Books, and librarian Sharon Lepire is integrating academic collaboration with teachers through Thinking Maps, and more.
At Fremont Elementary, librarian Rhiannon Moffat hosted a Harry Potter themed reading week during which the library was transformed into Hogwarts, students were sorted into houses, and could earn points all month long, with characters from the books even stopping by to guest read to the students.
At Mark Twain, students learned all about the Space X missions and created their own versions of the Artemis 1 spacecraft, led by librarian Denali Bell. During winter break, the library also set up an outdoor story walk for students and their families to enjoy.
Upper schools
For upper levels including Carson High School, Carson Middle School and Eagle Valley Middle School, the focus is on increasing engagement and circulation.
Post COVID, both CHS and EVMS numbers dropped, which CMS numbers increased significantly, thanks to a new librarian’s new ideas and fostering a “culture of reading” at the school.
However, numbers have rebounded and reached and are slated to surpass pre-COVID engagement in 2023 for CHS and EVMS.
At EVMS, librarian Stacey Myrehn often hosts writing contests, including this year’s Scary Story Writing Contest.
In addition, EVMS participated in the national Tournament of Books, which included selecting sixteen middle school books from 2022 in and a bracket was created for the battle. Students read the books, review them and voted until only one book was left as the tournament champion.
At CMS, new librarian Mirjam Caster has a large focus on print literacy, and came in with several new ideas that increased engagement significantly with students.
Apart from reading challenges and story writing contests, she also created Blind Dates with a Book, Book Genre Tastings, created dynamic shelving to increase engagement, incorporated many new books in the library, and even created a TikTok for the library for students to engage with online.
At Carson High School, the largest project of the year was the Story of Carson High project which included digitizing 100 years of history sourced from newspapers and yearbooks and uploading them online.
The next step is to create a museum at Carson High showcasing the history of Carson High — including several community members who have already started bringing in their own memorabilia for the cause.
“Hopefully within the next year or so we’ll have a space to house all these items and make them available to the public,” Campbell said.
Campbell is also focusing on literary engagement through hosting speed dating with books, a Lit Ladies project for women’s history month, poetry MakerSpaces for Poetry Month to create 3-D Poetry, and more.