Claire Cunningham has been our Librarian at Oranga School since 2014. Over this time she has gained qualifications in Information and Library Studies, specifically for children and young adults.  She is passionate about reading and loves seeing our students engaging with books.  This year Claire set herself the challenge to read her height in books.  The students enjoyed seeing which books she had read from Oranga’s library as well as comparing their height to the height of the books she had read.  She completed this challenge at the beginning of Term 4.

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This year Claire has been making sure Accessit, the library cataloguing software, is completed for every book in the library.    With just under 6,000 books in the library this has been a massive undertaking.  Next year Claire is hoping to work with each class to help with their inquiry learning and to provide students with the tools to enable them to critically analyse the information they have to ensure it is relevant.  

 

​Each week Claire has a library session with every class where she teaches them library skills and helps them to find books which will engage them.  She also organises Book Week which the students enjoy and culminates in the Book Character Parade.  She also updates the library website weekly where students can see which new books will be entering the library and search for books or information on a subject both in our library and on selected websites.  The link to the website is below - username ‘guest ’and no password.

 

Claire utilises the National Library to ensure each term every class has books relevant to their inquiry topic as well as some reading books.  She attends several meetings a year to meet up with other librarians to network and ensure she is providing the best library services to Oranga School.  She is a member of SLANZA (School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa) and studies a couple of librarian courses with them each year.