More than one way to hit the books: Love of Reading Week

This year, five Year 8 students launched a monthly magazine Pao Paper as a way to show Middle School campus life through students' eyes. The magazine covers a wide variety of topics of interest to students, such as Co-curricular Activities (CCA), teacher interviews, monthly school activities and write-ups of important events such as Halloween Dress Up Day and International Vision Week.

The team is gradually growing - compared to five students from Year 8 at the beginning, there are now 12 students from three different year groups working on the magazine. With a larger and more diverse team, Pao Paper can now produce content that has an even wider readership among Pao School students.

Recently, the Middle School launched a variety of “Love of Reading Week” themed activities. While students enjoyed this time dedicated to reading, the Pao Paper editorial team worked behind the scenes to keep a log of the activities and later wrote stories to share with everyone.

The following content is an excerpt from the "Monthly Journal of YK Pao Middle School Students, April 2020-2021 School Year".

Author：Jamie

Photo：Hannah

Love of Reading Week was filled with fun activities.

This month Pao Paper interviewed the librarian team, who made the exciting Love of Reading Week possible and enjoyable to all.

The librarians told us that their favorite activity is Dress-Up Day. Seeing everyone dressed in special and well-prepared costumes and taking photos with their friends is a happy memory that we will remember fondly. The whole librarian team should also be deeply touched by the enthusiasm and initiative of the students.

But when asked about the reason why Love of Reading Week takes place, the team's mood changes slightly. One of the librarians, Ms. Nancy, told us: " Middle school students are under more pressure than primary school students, and they usually use their computers for everything. However, reading is really a good thing. I hope that students can find a balance between reading, homework and computer use.”

Librarians are constantly buying new books and trying to increase students' enthusiasm with various activities. They hope that the Love of Reading Week and book sale can help students understand the significance of reading and strengthen their focus on reading.

Reading is a long-term investment so we should not worry so much about setting goals in our reading. Instead, let us enjoy the experience of reading quietly. At some point, you will suddenly think about a sentence, a scene, or a story that you read, and this is when reading pleasantly surprises you. Our librarians carefully planned Love of Reading Week to include World Book Day on April 23. We hope that on the next World Book Day and during the next Love of Reading Week, you will not need some special activities to make you stop using the computer. Instead, you will open a book that you have prepared, which will take the place of your computer.

Author：Hannah, Tina

Photo：Hannah

Discovering the job of library teachers

Most people only go to the library for reading and self-study during lunch break. We only see the librarians walking around, keeping the library in good order during that period. But what is the work of our librarians besides that? With lots of curiosity, we interviewed the librarian team.

According to our librarians, our library has a regular process for purchasing new books. Every single book on the bookshelves has been purchased after being evaluated and screened several times. When they have received the new books from the bookstores, the teachers will catalog them into the library by entering them into the online system. Then they classify them, label each copy, and distribute them onto the bookshelves.

During lunch break, some students and teachers will go to the library to borrow books, so librarians are also in charge of the management of borrowing and returning books. After the daily peak times, our librarians put the books that are misplaced back in the correct location so that people who come later can quickly find what they are looking for. The librarians said that after many students are done with their books, they randomly stick them back on the shelves, which causes many books in the library to be lost. For librarians, trying to find those books is like searching for a needle in a haystack. However, this is where book labels are helpful. Different colored stickers and codes on the spine of each book enable librarians to find the misplaced books faster.

Although the Hongqiao Campus library does not look large, it already has a collection of 7,000 books. The librarian team said that the library systems of the Wuding, Hongqiao and Songjiang campuses are shared. Students can log in to the system using their own accounts and get any book from any campus library they want. If the status of the book is available, it can be lent to other campuses. The school transports the books from other campuses to Hongqiao and students are able to take the books that they reserved.

When being asked about the future plans for our library, librarians said that the development of the library will certainly take some time. From three years ago when there were only three bookshelves to the new library that was just built less than a year ago, "All aspects of the library construction has a development cycle." Wuding and Songjiang campuses were able to reach a collection of tens of thousands of books after more than ten years of development. Comparatively, the Hongqiao library is still “at a fledgling stage." Thus, the core plan in the next few years is to expand the collection of books and enrich the categories of books.

Relief & Annoyance in the Life of Librarians

Ms. Nancy told us, "Once, a few students, seeing that we had a lot of new books on the shelves to be sorted, labeled, and wrapped in a protective cover, volunteered to help us out, explaining that they had done similar work in primary school. Their help greatly improved our efficiency in getting through the piles of books and relieved our workload. I didn’t even teach or know these students particularly well, so their actions really touched me.”

We then moved on to discuss common student behaviors that made her job slightly more difficult. Fortunately, Ms. Nancy said, she had already found a solution to noisy students—ringing a bell.

Author：Erica

Photo：Hannah, Barry, Ms. Anna

Dress-Up Day is a fitting finale for Reading Week, a chance for students to savour the fruits of their hard work. Let us get a sense of that happy feeling through these photos: