January: Dear Diary Library Display

January is National Letter Writing Month. I wanted to create a display based on letters and process of writing letters. However, in our collection, we had a very limited amount of books on letters and letter writing. I discovered, while searching for letters, that we had several diaries in our collection. They were overlooked for most of our displays so I chose to create a "Dear Diary" display to encourage our students to write.

The display was extremely simple. I pulled all of our diaries and showcased them on the display. I also added a couple of books on the writing process. For signage I made up a couple of signs in Photoshop that said Dear Diary (I used different fonts for each sign). I cut out one sign and taped it to the top of the bookcase.

To make the display more interactive and exciting I created a round robin writing game. I typed up four writing prompts:

If you are reading this...
Once upon a time...
I wish....
At this very moment.....

Above each prompt I wrote directions on how to play the round robin game (each student writes one to two sentences, adding on to the story/what was written before them)

I cut out each prompt and glued them onto four pages on a yellow legal pad. I then put the legal pad on a clipboard and hung in on the wall adjacent to the library display. I created two signs directing the students to the clipboard.

I tried to encourage the first student to begin the story for each new prompt. Once a student had written a sentence or two other students caught on fast. Not every prompt was successful, but we got a few good length stories out of the game! I was surprised at how many students stopped to look at the diaries. Another successful display!