January: Puzzled Over What To Read Next? Display

Puzzled over what to read next? Check out our new library display!

For our first three displays of the new year we focused on variations of the classic "If you liked this, you'll love this" display. For our Puzzled display I used our Silhouette Cameo to cut out dozens of puzzle pieces and then I taped the pieces together forming the border of the display. For each Matching set of books I taped a puzzle piece of a matching color on the covers.

I including this sign on the display letting the students know what the display was all about.

I found some puzzle piece letters online and made the signage for the top of the display.

I used Goodreads for help finding books that went well together. That's all there was to it!

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!