December 2014 – Page 2 – Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School Library

SafeTeen

Reminder that SafeTeen for Grade 10 Boys is in the library on Friday, December 12th.

As such, the room will be closed to all drop-in and study block students, as well as to all female staff.

Christmas Reading Rewards

Ask your classroom teachers about Christmas Reading Rewards! Special treats await those students who have shown that they have bought into doing SSR each day at LTSS.

SafeTeen

SafeTeen is a tremendous program that covers a variety of topics including conflict resolution, healthy relationships, bullying, sexual health and more.

Once again we are very pleased to host SafeTeen seminars in the school library. Grade 10 BOYS will be attending SafeTeen seminars on December 11 & 12. As such, the room will be closed to all drop-in and study block students, as well as to all female staff.

Melvil Dewey

source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The father of the Dewey Decimal System was born on this day in 1851. To learn more about the life of this influential librarian, reformer and educator, click here.

Library Team Christmas Extravaganza

The annual Library Team Christmas Celebration Lunch Extravaganza will take place on Wednesday, December 17 at Lunch Time. All Library Team members, including Volunteers and Library Science Students are REQUIRED to attend. Any students who do not bring presents for Mr. Sexton will NOT get their volunteer hours sheets signed.

Just kidding. He loves signing those sheets. They are awesome. So come to the party. You will have fun. And eat lots of yummy food.

STR: The Naturals

The Naturals is one of the books nominated for the Surrey Teens Read Book of the Year competition. Check out the other titles here at your school library. Find out more about Surrey Teens Read at surreyteensread.weebly.com

Bodhi Day

The religion known as Buddhism dates back to the 6th or 5th Century BCE, when the Indian Prince Siddhartha Gautama became the “Buddha,” literally, “the Enlightened One.” The followers of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism observes Bodhi Day in celebration of the day that the Buddha sat below the Bodhi Tree and meditated on the meaning of life. Bodhi Day is celebrated mainly by the Buddhists of northern and eastern Asia (in Japan the day is known as Rohatsu) and in countries to which those people have immigrated (such as Canada). For more on Bodhi Day and the life of the Buddha, click here.

Colm Cille

If you haven’t yet read How the Irish Saved Civilization, put it on your reading list! Author Thomas Cahill tells some remarkable stories from the era that he calls one of the “hinges of history.” Cahill makes the case that ideas that came from the Greeks, the Romans and the Jews, ideas that are among the foundational ideas of our civilization, were on the edge of an abyss, possibly to be lost forever. If not for the Irish, our civilization, at least civilization as we know it today, may have slipped away forever. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

One of the remarkable figures that jumps off the pages is Colm Cille. Known also as Saint Columba in the Roman Catholic Church, Colm Cille was one of those Irishman who inspired the notion that Ireland is the land of “Saints and Scholars.” In a world of darkness, Colm Cille helped to bring light.

Fifteen hundred years ago, in the wake of a terrible battle, full of remorse, St. Colmcille left Ireland for Scotland. On the remote island of Iona he began a new life and helped create a new world. The beautiful manuscripts he and his followers produced helped spread not only Christianity but ideas about literacy, peace-making and nation-building, not to mention punctuation! His followers became missionaries, builders, teachers. It’s no exaggeration to say that these men from the North of Ireland rebuilt Europe. (source: The Return of Colmcille)

St. Nicholas Day

Tomorrow you can celebrate the REAL Santa Claus.

If people tell you that Santa Claus isn’t real, tell them to think again! Saint Nicholas lived in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD(CE). He lived in what is now known as Turkey, but what was then a Greek area of the Roman Empire. The legends surrounding his life grew and evolved over the years, eventually leading to our modern picture of Santa.

In much of Europe and in many parts of the world, St. Nicholas Day is celebrated on December 6, or on another date other than Christmas. For more information, check out the St. Nicholas Centre.

Use District Databases to Find Articles from Magazines, Newspapers and More

Not everything can be linked to from Google. One of the big myths about online information is that everything is free and easy to find on the internet / world wide web. Many things are only available if you have proper access, including paid sites with usernames and passwords.

The good news is that as a student of Surrey Schools, you can use subscription databases that SD36 has paid for.

Find out how you can use a district online resource like Ebsco to find articles from thousands of different magazines, newspapers, journals and other sources. This includes fining full text articles, with all the pictures, maps, diagrams and other visuals.

Click here to find out more.

STR: What’s Left of Me

What’s Left of Me is one of the books nominated for the Surrey Teens Read Book of the Year competition. Check out the other titles here at your school library.

Find out more about Surrey Teens Read at surreyteensread.weebly.com

Why SSR?

Why SSR (Reason #17 of 3,487,659): Escape. Reading gives you a little bit of time to escape from this world. Maybe you are having a tough time and just need a break from your worries. Reading, especially reading fiction, allows you to escape from this world for a short time and explore new worlds of wonder, mystery, excitement and fun. You can’t hide from your problems. It isn’t healthy to look for a constant escape from this world. But everyone could use a little escape now and then. Reading is a healthy and revitalizing way to do it!