Last Day of Term 2

Today is the last day.  WooHoo!  Four weeks of peace and quiet in the library, and we are hoping to get a few little projects completed that we haven’t had the chance to do throughout the semester.

The school is running a Drug Awareness Expo today and the Library is hosting all the organisations that came on board to help out.  It is awesome – we have people everywhere at various tables all through the Library.  This includes Legal Aid, Sexual Health, Alcohol Awareness and lots of others. Our school nurse has been busy pulling all of this together and has done a fabulous job.  Thank you, Mel!

 I also set up a few DVD’s for the students to watch concerning the effects of alcohol and ice on the human body along with PowerPoint presentations about the dangers of smoking.

Elsewhere in the school there are sports programs and drama activities along with drumming and Hip Hop events.  The Science department is busy demonstrating the effects of alcohol on the brain by melting polystyrene brains in turpentine much to the delight of the students.

We also have the Grade 5 & 6s visiting from the Primary Campus who are just delightful.  Their manners are fantastic and they are so involved in what is happening - we are looking forward to seeing them here in High School.

Coming up at the start of next semester we will have lots of new ‘stuff’’ to introduce to the staff.  This will include magazines and new technology to use with our students to encourage literacy and reading.

To all staff and students – have a safe and relaxing 4 week break and we will see you all back at the end of July.    

Pats on the Back!

Barkly College Library Staff are pleased to announce that we were asked to write a guest article for the SLA of Victoria's Bright Ideas blog, which is all about the great things happening in schools and school libraries around Australia.  Our article was about how we went about setting up our blog, so that others can get an idea of how easy it was - and on the use of Web 2.0 tools in our library.

It was great to have acknowledgement and so early in our blogging journey!  Thank you.

The link is here - please check out the blog.

http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/

Library Lessons with year 7s

We have had a couple of great lessons with the year 7s this week, discussing whether or not everything is true on the internet and learning how to evaulate websites.

The first part of the lesson involved the students constructing Al-foil Deflector Beanies (otherwise known as AFDBs) while Library Staff explained that this was to keep them safe from mindcontrol rays.  We had some pretty awesome beanies happening as they decided to make a fashion statement, since they would be wearing it. 

They also had lots of great ideas for saving the endangered Tree Octopus, involving bridges, tunnels and lots of signage. 

Then they were introduced to Google MentaPlex and everyone had a go at trying to 'think' their search term at the spiral. 

We then went back, and using a checklist and working as a group, evaluated some websites to see whether they were real or hoax.  This generated a fair bit of discussion as to why people would put up things that are not true and how you can tell if it is a hoax site.  They were very unimpressed that people would provide such wrong information - but were happy to test out various sites to see if they were good or bad. 

They were not all that happy with Carrie and myself either - for 'tricking' them - but hopefully we are back in their good graces now.

Quotes of interest.

I did a bit of hunting around on the Internet for a bunch of quotes to put on the blog. Here they are and I hope that some of them speak to you.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi

If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

They can because they think they can.
Virgil

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.
Vince Lombardi

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.
Jeremy Collier

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure -- which is: Try to please everybody.
Herbert Bayard Swope

Impatience never commanded success.
Edwin H. Chapin

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

You can't expect people to look eye to eye with you if you are looking down on them.
Anonymous

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.
Anonymous

How a man plays a game shows something of his character, how he loses shows all of it.
Anonymous

I hope that you enjoy these quotes. I find that if I am having a difficult day, sometimes words of wisdom from someone can help me get through.

Carrie

The Hunger Games

         

The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins, is a fiction book aimed for the young adult genre, which I found myself unable to put down. Its combination of nerve-racking tension, thrilling action, and engaging love story kept me up at all hours of the night, wondering what will happen next. I was surprised at how completely fascinating the plot was.

When the story begins, North America as we know it has been destroyed and is divided into 12 districts, ruled by a cruel government located at the Capitol. Every year, the Capitol selects one boy and one girl from each district to compete in the terrifying Hunger Games. The Games forces children from ages 12 to 18 against each other in a fight to the death in a giant, hazardous arena. Everything is televised all over the country.

Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl from District 12, takes her younger sister’s place as one of 24“tributes”.

Katniss must not only survive the Games, but deal with a romance between her and another tribute Peeta Mellark from District 12, knowing how heartbroken her best friend Gale is, seeing her every move with Peeta. While finding the strength to kill strangers her own age for her survival and to impress the government is a lot of pressure on Katniss.

The further I got through the book, the more interesting it got. Suzanne Collins described the locations in perfect detail and made me feel like I was in the arena, witnessing everything that Katniss experienced. When it came to the romance of Katniss and Peeta, it was impossible to put the book down. Knowing that the only way to keep your other tribute alive is to show affection and knowing that it killed Gale to see this made Katniss even more desperate to survive.

I absolutely loved this book from start to finish; it left me itching to find out what happens next. If I had to rate it out of ten, I would give it an eleven!

 

by Tori Reid

Year 11 Student

Barkly College Secondary Campus