Mitchell Library education programme

Process

Each programme uses three elements:

• book material
• oral telling
• library skills-based activities.

The library skills-based activities include general library use, care of books, alphabetical skills, location skills, reference skills, and CD-ROM and ICT resources.

Targeted programmes

Each programme is designed to provide information and develop skills at an appropriate level for the child. Visits for Primary 1-3 would generally be short, and form a basic introduction to the library and its contents. The learning experience would be positively reinforced by both a story session and fun activity.

Visits for Primary 4-7 would be longer and involve the development of more complex concepts appropriate to the child’s age and stage of development. Yet again, the learning experience is positively reinforced by a story extract and relevant activity.

Visits for secondary school pupils are customised to suit individual study projects and to ensure that pupils are aware of resources available to them and are confident in using these.

Libraries currently support 45-50 educational visits per week throughout the school term. The visits are responsive to each school’s needs and a number of creative approaches are adopted in order to inspire a child’s imagination and enthusiasm for learning, but activities must relate back to books.

Example visit 

The recent exhibition, Anne Frank: A History for Today (in association with the Anne Frank Trust Scotland), ran in the Mitchell Main Hall from 5 December 2008 to 10 January 2009.

The exhibition told the story of the Frank family set against the backdrop of the rise of the Nazi Party, the persecution of the Jewish population and other minority groups, and the Holocaust. It showed what can happen when prejudice goes unchecked, minorities are mistreated and intolerance gains the upper hand.

Forty classes (around 1200 pupils and teachers) visited the exhibition and took part in a related discussion. Two-thirds of these classes also took part in a workshop which examined the issues addressed in the exhibition such as prejudice, discrimination and persecution.

Around three-quarters of these classes visited their local library prior to the exhibition visit. This pre-visit consisted of a short film looking at the life of Anne Frank, along with the historical context of her story. This gave all the children attending a basic knowledge of the subject before attending the exhibition.

Books on the subject were issued to each class at this time, and children also got the chance to borrow individually. A short discussion of the DVD also took place during these sessions.

Question prompts were handed out to the children during both the DVD session and the exhibition. These enabled the children to make notes as they viewed the film and the exhibition, and assisted them with their discussions.