WLS Teens

Poetry Returns to the Field Library with National Slam Finalist JIVE POETIC

You’re invited on Wednesday, May 23, 2007, for a second round of poetry slam through a workshop at your school, culminating at 3:30pm in The Field Library with the public performance of JIVE POETIC, current member of the Nuyorican Poets Café’s National Slam Team, and ZORK, host of poetry slams in Westchester Co.

Invite your friends, bring your poem/s, and speak out!

Sibyl Canaan, The Field Library Director & Martín Blasco,Young Adult Librarian

PS2 Tournaments

Since there has been such a gaming interest, I have been holding PS2 Tournaments. I have written a formula below of how I do it. If anyone is interested in holding one, and has any questions please contact me.

Playstation 2 Tournament Guidelines

 

1 ½ Months Before

 

• Decision of Game (this may be decided      by teens, as in the Fifa 2006      Tournament). Take a look at the game to see if the play structure can      be modified to make the rounds, time, quarters, etc short enough that it      will take approximately four hours of time.

 

• See if you can secure three copies of      the game. This could be through renting, purchasing used copies, or seeing      if you cannot borrow copies from teens. This needs to be done in advance,      because if you CANNOT secure the needed amount of copies, you cannot run      the tournament.

 

1 Month Before

 

· Press event out as usual with fliers and press releases. Check to make sure that the date is available on the calendar in the conference room, as well as writing it down on the schedule.

 

· Secure the gift card and the copies of the game. Be sure to purchase one copy of the game for the runner up.

 

· Call the system to see if you can secure the third PS2.

 

· Create the sign in sheet.

 

 

Two Weeks before

 

· The room setup is as follows: Two television sets with the capability of having a PS2 hooked up to it, two chairs around the Television or projector and chairs for viewing. Food table. Check machinery.

 

· Make sure that the appropriate coverage is available. Coverage should include: Three people to monitor all three of the stations, (this can include your teens that are comfortable doing this), a staff worker and/or librarian for general crowd control. Have teens get involved in setup and by all means ask them for help and input.

 

 

Day of Tournament

 

• Have and check sign in sheet, make      sure participants fill out pieces of paper and insert them in the bag.

 

• Shake bag and pull participants names      out of bags. Monitoring of terminals is essential, in case of tie,      participant who scores first will go on to the second round if tie cannot      be broken.

 

• If there are an uneven number of      participants, the participant that scores the most or lost by the least      amount of points will move on to the second round.

 

• Keep pulling names until there are two      left. This is the final match. Winner of this will win the tournament.

Jamie
Port Chester

Career Fair

I have a penchant for doing big things (and giving myself some gray hair in the process) and so I am holding a "Job Opportunities Fair" where I have contacted businesses via cold call telephone , as well as spoke to the Port Chester Chamber of Commerce to see if any of the business owners would like to take on a teen (or even better, teens) for the summer, or year round employment. I have contacted a bunch of people (Playland, thank god is coming) as well as some internship opportunities (Thanks to White Plains hospital) a lot of people have not responded as of yet (hence the gray hairs). My program is April 21st (I don't even have to ask if I should be worried yet), with a pannel discussion April 14th.  Any suggestions to see how I can lean on these buisnesses?  I think a store visit would be good, or would that be too (for lack of a better term) desperate? I am open to all suggestions. As always, thanks in advance.

Jamie
Port Chester

Teens, Gaming, and Libraries

Last week we had a lively meeting on the topic of teens and gaming.  It included playing a variety of games - Karaoke Revolution, Guitar Hero II, Dance Dance Revolution Extreme, and Katamari Damacy - and talking about why teens like to play these games as well as what the educational benefits of gaming is for teens.  The handout  with a list of useful resources and ideas for gaming projects in the library is available.

On the topic of literacy skills supported by teen game play some of the things discussed include:

• Playing games like World of Warcraft includes reading about the game, the characters, and choices that need to be consider in order to succeed.  Reading and writing messages from/to other players about how to play the game successfully is also required in order to succeed.
• Playing Karaoke requires reading of lyrics, reading of on-screen directions.
• Playing a game like Madden football requires reading related to team selection, play-books, and such.
• Modding (modifying) games such as the SIMs requires that teens come up with the modification they want to make, consider what's already available, decide how they will make the modification, and read and/or write out their plans.  FanFiction is a form of modding that teens also participate in and there is FanFiction related to games.

There was also discussion about the whether or not librarians should promote or allow teen playing games online in which they might encounter people that they shouldn't be in touch with.  We talked about the need to give teens opportunities to participate in online activities in environments where they can learn to be smart and safe. Libraries have a great opportunity for with teens talking about how to play games and talking about how to be safe when playing games with those one has never met.

The discussion also focused on whether or not librarians should make pre-judgments about what games teens should be able to play in the library.  Before judging a game it's important that librarians try the games out for themselves. Librarians need to know what actually does and doesn't happen in the games teens play. It's also important to remember that game play in the library should, in most instances, focus on the appropriate behavior in the play and not the actual game. For example, if teens play games in the library and don't disturb other customers while doing so their behavior is just fine.

I mentioned that one of the libraries that I work with, the decision was made to only purchase games that are rated E for Everyone or T for teen. The librarians decided not to purchase M for Mature games and the teens understand that decision. The Entertainment Software Rating Board designates game ratings. They have information on their website that you can download or you can have brochures sent to your library.

We also talked about Second Life and Teen Second Life. These are not games, but they are virtual worlds in which teens and adults participate. There is a library in Second Life and a library is in the works for Teen Second Life. It's important for librarians to understand that along with playing games online and on computer teens are also participating in online worlds in which social interactions and learning take place.

Don't forget that there are things you can do in the library that helps teens expand their game play.  For example:

• Host a teens teach gaming to adults event.
• Sponsor modding/fanfiction workshops
• Have teens select games and equipment for the library
• Ask teens to setup gaming policies and guidelines
• Have the teens teach the librarians about gaming.

It's important to give teens a chance to talk to librarians about what they play and why they like to play specific games. Get a teen gaming group together and see what they come up with for game related programs and services at the library.

WLS purchased a Playstation II game console and a variety of games for the console. These will be available to member libraries for circulation.

CSI Murder Mystery Night

I held my 2^nd CSI: Bronxville this past October. 

It was a murder mystery program based on “Anyone's Guess: Death Gets a Red Card."

(Anyone’s Guess kits are available from Highsmith.com.)

I ran the program by myself, which is doable, but not recommended. I had 18 teens attend!

I did not do what the kit recommended, which is set up separate crime areas for the "detectives" to investigate.  They give you an excellent planning book on how to set up the crime scene, detective's desk, etc., but I didn't have the room to do this.

Here's what I did:

The students were invited into the "Detective's Lounge" where they played warm-up games. (Paper and pencil are needed!)

Game #1 was a side table with a "candy bar crime station."  I had six plates set out with chunks of different candy bars set on each plate.  The candy was chopped up so it no longer resembled the original candy bar.  The students had to test their observational skills and guess what candy bar was on each plate.  This is a good game to play while you’re waiting for everyone to arrive.

   

Warm-up game #2

Set-up a table with various small objects and let the students study the table for one minute.  Then cover the items and have them write down as many items & details about the items as they can remember.

Warm-up Game #3

Memory test.  I found a blurb online that stated that the average person can only retain 7 pieces of information in their short term memory. So we tested this assertion.  I wrote a series of 6 numbers on a display board.  After ten seconds, I covered it.  We continued this pattern through 10 numbers before going back and checking out answers.

Warm-up game #4

Ask daily observation questions (how many stripes on our flag?  how many buttons on a phone?  Is the green light on the top or the bottom of a traffic light?  how many sides to a stop sign?)   I found a quiz list of questions like these online.

Warm-Up game #5

Play "partner mix-up."  Each student picks a partner. One person in the pair alters their appearance in some small way (tuck in a shirt, untie a shoe, etc.) while their partner has their back turned.  They then had to determine what was different.

If you have a partner for the program, have them wear a crazy outfit (wig, glasses, coat, socks, buttons, etc.)  And walk around the room while the other games are taking place.  Then once your partner leaves the room, ask the students to write down everything they could remember about your partner's appearance.

I played the first three games w/the teens, & I awarded prizes for the top scorers in each game.

For the murder mystery program:

   I wanted to incorporate library skills into my game.  So instead of setting up crime scenes to visit, I made the teens hunt for their clues.  I divided the students into 3 teams- Team A, B, and C.  (In the future, I will have more teams so the number of students in each group isn’t so high.)

The teams had to use location cards to locate specific library materials that contained pieces evidence. 

For the set-up, I photocopied 3 sets of the "evidence" provided in the "Anyone's Guess" box.    I paired one piece of evidence with a location clue and put them into envelopes marked "Team A,” "Team B,” or “Team C.”  I had a specfic location course mapped out ahead of time.  I staggered the teams so they wouldn't be looking for the same clues at the same time.

Note:  I noticed that some of the teens try to cheat! So warn them in advance that you have library spies watching them & “misconduct” points will be deducted if they’re caught running or cheating. (They were trying to hide the book so the other team wouldn't be able to find it, etc.) 

I gave my teams 10 locations to visit w/ a piece of evidence to collect at each stop. 

I also instructed to kids to be on the lookout for extra "bonus" clues.  The actual mystery solution was only worth 75%-- the other 25% would be made up of bonus clues.  So, if both teams got the solution, the bonus questions would determine the winner.

For the bonuses, I asked each team to elect an official transcriber.  That person was in charge of writing down evidence or anything suspicious that the team encounters.  The bonus questions were given on the back of each location card.  The final location envelope contained a solution sheet and list of questions.For example, one location clue read:  Find "The View from the Cherry Tree" in the Children's Room.   Who is the author of this book?

For game start, I invited the two teams to visit the crime scene.  The kit describes how to set up the "evidence."  I gave the kids the background info. on the victim and crime scene (supplied by "Anyone’s Guess")--  I instructed the team transcribers to take notes on everything.   

Then the teams had to search for more evidence.  I handed each team a location start card and they took off!  (They got so excited-- I had to keep reminding them to stop running or they would lose points.)

The trail took them all over the library, testing their knowledge of the catalog system and the layout of the library.  The teens even had to pick up a book on hold and inquire with the reference librarian about a book.  The last location clue led the detectives back to their lounge where they were

instructed to piece together the crime using the gathered evidence— They had to be able to tell me the suspect, murder weapon, motive, and give supporting evidence.    They were to list their answers on their solution sheet.

I gave them a deadline--- hand in your sheet within 40 minutes.  Everything would count-- bonus questions, solution, even time.

The last clue led them back to the “detective’s lounge” where they worked on their solution sheets.

I ended up with one clear winning team.  They got the solution 100% correct and got some of the bonus questions.  I gave each participant some candy and a bookmark.  The winning team got Halloween toys and face paint.

Using the "Anyone's Guess" game is really the way to go! 

Anyone’s Guess Kits include everything you need to plan and produce a mystery program for middle and high school age students. Unlike role–playing mysteries, Anyone’s Guess kits work with any size group. Participants examine the evidence, read accounts from witnesses and suspects, and then solve the mystery. Each kit includes a planning guide that details the props you will need, suggestions for creating the scenes, program procedures and the solution to the mystery. Display the included evidence sheets for all of the participants to see, and reproduce the crime incident/victim/suspect reports, initial statements to the police and answer sheets for individual handouts. Sample press releases and flyers help you promote your program.

Erin / BRO

Fear, Fiction & Teens

I just came from an amazing symposium, jointly sponsored by the Yale University Child Study Center and the Anna Freud Center, entitled “Fear and Fiction: The Power of Children’s Books and the Inner Life of The Child.” Presentations by children’s and teen authors who have written books dealing with this theme were interspersed with analyses of their books by psychiatrists and therapists. It was a wonderful affirmation of why literature matters and how literature works.

For teens in particular, the intimate voice of an author who seems to be writing just for you and who seems to know your darkest fears—can provide a feeling of companionship as well as direction on the lonely voyage to adulthood.

Arietta Slade, Professor of Clinical & Developmental Psychology, City University of New York, reminded us that “the beauty of literature is that we discover pieces of ourselves by loosing ourselves in the stories of others.” And Chris Crutcher added, that “it doesn’t matter where the stories come from (online, print, film), but where the big questions come from – where did I come from? Where am I going?”  "Fearlessness," pointed out Jacqueline Woodson, "is freedom."

Karen Gilmore, Associate Director, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, explained some of the development tasks of adolescence, emphasizing individuation and separation from parents. The journey to adulthood can be scary and it can be lonely. Books, stories, literature, she pointed out, can help teens feel less alone.

It was inspiring to see how inspired the psychiatrists were by the authors and their books and the eagerness of the therapists to incorporate literature into the lives of teens. 

If I can decipher my notes, I’ll share quotes and insights from Gregory Maguire, who gave a personal, poetic and very wise keynote, and from Lois Lowry, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Jacqueline Woodson, and Chris Crutcher —who were all wonderful—among others like Neil Gaiman and David Almond, who sent papers.

Judith Rovenger, WLS

Middle School Critics

Middle School Critics is a group that I formed last year where kids meet and chat about books, movies, comic books, computer games, and music that they would like to review for our newsletter (over pizza, naturally.)  We meet once a month and sometimes the kids just give quick oral reviews to the group members and then write the reviews at home - and sometimes there is enough time for them to get started writing the reviews at the meeting.  (I time them when they give the reviews with the goal of keeping it to 1 minute so that they can practice how to keep it on point - it also makes it a little more fun and less boring for the kids to wait for their turn to speak).  After the reviews are written, they exchange them and offer each other feedback on what could make the review better.  I put everything together in the newsletter and make enough copies for it to be distributed to everyone in the Middle School.  Of course, I also put several out at our library.  Interestingly enough, when I asked if they wanted the newsletter to be online - they said that no one would read it if it was online...Also interesting is that most of the kids in this group do not have email addresses and do not IM (although, the 8th graders and the ones very into computer games do.)  Not only might this be a little surprising...it is also quite frustrating for me to keep in touch with them!  Thank goodness for school announcements...(I put out reminders about the Critics meetings this way...)

Amy, BRI

TeenScreen & Middle School Matinee

This is about movie selections for YAs, but I want to give some history of my two film programs first:

When I walked onto the job in April 2004, I inherited a monthly program called Middle School Movie Night. It started with parents on the Auxiliary Board who wanted to show their kids movies; they had planned to show The Great Escape, Funny Face & Jaws. In the middle of TGE, the five fifth-grade girls were extremely bored, and with over an hour and a half left, we changed the movie to Legally Blonde.

When I expanded the program to weekly showings over the summer, the program was more successful because I let the kids vote on which movies they wanted to see: I made up a list of PG & PG-13 movies and the ones with the most votes won (they could write in movies, too, which is where I got some ideas for movies from). Numbers are higher during the summer with the high mark of 77 kids for Meet the Fockers. Some parents gave us a hard time about the PG-13 movies, but I feel, and the director and manager back me, that the films are not required and like our books, the parents can decide what is appropriate for the kids based on the rating and what they find out about the film.

The selection of YA movies has been recently fewer, but we are still going on with the program, although during this school year, I have changed the program to Middle School Matinee, and I show films when the schools are closed and only occasionally at night because the older teens wanted their own movies and there are only so many nights I want to work. Luckily, Stick It! will be released close to Teen Read Week time, so we are showing that after school and I went out on a limb for TeenScreen and am showing Dazed and Confused, which is rated R. We showed The Breakfast Club, which is also rated R, and no one said anything. It is my understanding that many of the kids, starting with the ninth graders have seen D-a-C many times and so I am only a little worried about pushing the envelope.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, if it seemed like this post ended abruptly, that is because I wanted to save it, not publish it, but it was published. So:

If we are populist-in-essence at the library, and the kids want to see it, and my success as a YA librarian is based at least partly on my ability to run a successful YA program that people come to, then does it matter that the film is rated R or PG-13?

Lisa | RFRR

Starting up the film club (again)

I decided I'd do a brief writeup of our digital film club because it's been one of the most successful teen programs I've run in the library - perhaps the most successful one I've run continuously as a "class". Here's how it all started:

Back in the late 90s, sometime after our first renovation of the YA room, we realized the computers we'd gotten back then (a cd-rom catalog and a windows 3.1 machine) would need to be replaced. Since I was familiar with the Mac OS and had a Mac at home, I requested a couple of iMacs, which we got. Some months later, after Apple had come out with iMovie 2, a couple of young men (14 or so) came in holding a videocamera and asked me politely if they could edit their film on our computers. I had to expain that our computers didn't have firewire, which they would have needed to get their clips onto the computers, but those boys planted a seed in my mind. So, when we were thinking of replacing the computers again, I wrote a request for two new eMacs with firewire, DVD burners, and iLife software installed. I also asked for two digital video cameras to start a film club for kids between 11 and 16 years old. The Friends of the Library approved my request and gave me a $3,000 grant to purchase the equipment. We got the equipment two years ago in July, and the film club was born.

The first thing I had to do was to familarize myself with the software and hardware, and then come up with a brief curriculum and advertise the club. The iMovie software is actually very easy to use; it's structured like a word processor, allowing kids to highlight, cut, copy and paste their clips. It's also very easy to import clips from the cameras. So you don't have to be any kind of technical wizard to run a program like this one. In fact, one of the things the kids love about it is that they get to play around, writing music in garageband, moving their finished songs into iTunes, and then moving the songs from iTunes into iMovie. They showed me how to do that, and also how to do voiceovers! Where I come in is offering them a structure and a time and place to experiment. This was my basic  curriculum for the first year:

Late September: Storyboards. The kids viewed "chaos in the kitchen from "Jurassic Park" and then examined the storyboard for this sequence. I asked them why a person might want to plan out a complex action shot. Then they split into four groups; two worked on writing scripts and/or drawing storyboards, while two more worked with the cameras. Then the groups switched. Timing: 20 minutes or so for soda and pizza, then ten minutes for the film clip. Then five minutes or so for discussion and breaking into groups, and each group got 25 minutes or so for preproduction and the same for work with the cameras. Total, an hour and a half or a bit over. We had 20 kids between 11 and 14 or 15 years old at the first meeting. This dropped off as the year went on, but we almost always had at least 10 to 12 kids for every large-group meeting. We met about once every four to six weeks through the school year, on Wednesday nights between 6:30 and 8:00.

Early December: Sound in movies. We viewed a clip with and without the sound, and the kids practiced using sound effects and moving songs into iMovie.

January: POV - Hitchcock, the 39 Steps. Where is the camera, and why? How do you tell a story visually?

Feb/March: Credits and subtitles: The Birds, opening credits. We also viewed a brief clip from the film and discussed what made it suspenseful.

We also discussed transitions and effects and the kids practiced cutting, copying and moving their clips.

It wasn't till the end of the second year that the kids got to have an official showing of their movies, which we did at the end of May. We hope to do the same this year. Some of the original kids (who were then 8th graders and are now sophomores) are still in the club and we add new 6th and 7th graders every year.  It's been great! We did advertise the program in all our usual ways two years ago, but, since then, word of mouth has been our best method of advertising. The club is limited to 20 kids, because it's very hands-on and labor intensive, and I can't imagine coping with more than 20 youngsters by myself. We are hoping to add a third computer and camera this winter.