Prince Albert Grand Council

School Library Development Committee

Newsletter Winter 2011

LEAH DORION Author Leah Dorion captivated students in the schools she visited. In addition to reading her book The Giving Tree , she brought some of the original artwork done for this book. She passed these pieces of art around to emphasize to students how much work is involved in writing and publishing a book. She toured Wahpeton, Montreal Lake, Little Red and Sturgeon Lake. Leah is an extremely talented author and presenter. She relates very well with all ages of students and is flexible in her presentations. What a delightful author to have in our schools!! (pictured above—Leah Dorion and Blanche Bird)

WELCOME!!!!!

Nisto Awasisak at Cumberland House has a new librarian.

A hearty WELCOME is extended to Gabriel Buck.

Gabriel comes to us as an experienced librarian having

worked in libraries in Saskatoon and The Pas. He has an excellent “game plan” for the library at Cumberland and is to be

commended for his enthusiasm and work ethic.

Gabriel, on behalf of PAGC and your fellow librarians I extend

to you a warm welcome. You join an excellent group of “top shelf”

librarians. Welcome aboard!!!

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit briefly with Edna Mirasty in her library at Senator Myles Venne School. Edna has a

great idea for organization of her library. She has placed colored dots on all of her non fiction books based on the Dewey System.

For example, all the 300’s have orange dots and all the 900’s have green dots. She says it makes shelving much easier. Makes

sense if you can load the book truck by color first and then sort it would save a lot of moving back and forth. GREAT IDEA

EDNA!!!!

Edna continues to run a Family Literacy Program from her library and has a lot of expertise in this area. If you are looking

for ideas, she would be a great resource!

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy

to govern but, impossible to enslave!

Bradley

School Library Advisory Committee

Meeting Feb. 3rd and 4th were the dates of our second meeting. After

clearing the “business” part of the meeting we were on to the

fun part! Pictured here is Myrna Sopal from the Prince Albert

Literacy Network. She gave us some great ideas for library

activities and Family Literacy. Myrna also encouraged us to

borrow Story Sacks from the Network. Thursday also saw us

do some exploring of web sites that are useful for literacy. On

Friday, Grace Thomson introduced us to the website of Jan

Brett. What great resources are available there and they are all

free!! Jan Brett Books would be a great addition to any library.

Members of the Committee felt that the time they had spent

was very worthwhile and that there is indeed benefit from

meeting in smaller groups.

Thanks to Marcelynn Constant who made sure we all had Jan

Brett books for Grace’s presentation.

Next meeting will be in May — see you in the spring!!

Raise a Reader Once again we were fortunate to receive a grant from the Star

Phoenix for the Raise a Reader Project.

This year, our target group is grade 2. Each students in grade 2

will receive a zip loc bag with a book, activity sheet and ticket.

The goal is to have the student take the book home and read it

with a parent or guardian. Then, do the activity sheet and, finally

return the ticket to the school library where a draw will be made.

Students get to keep the book and some lucky person will win the

prize. The real winner is the student who hopefully will get

“Hooked on Reading”.

Joseph Naytowhow and John Murray Once again, we were delighted to have Joseph Naytow-

how and John Murray tour some of our schools!

Joseph Naytowhow is a gifted storyteller, musician and

author. He is highly sought after and we are indeed fortunate to

have had him with us. He has recently been on tour in France

and Ottawa.

John Murray is also an excellent musician who can play

the “saw” and fiddle equally well. John works with Nature Sas-

katchewan and heavily promotes saving our forests. He has

some great pictures in his presentation.

Thank you to all the schools we visited — you were ex-

cellent hosts!

“ LIBRARY PEOPLE”

Seen here is Harriet Roy from PNLS working on the

installation of SILS at Montreal Lake. Looks like fun!

A warm welcome at Grandmother’s Bay from Librarian Sally!

Above is an example of Edna’s

“dots”.

Here we have Grace and Bernice

at the Library Committee Meet-

ing!