Finding Your Way in the Library: Student-created Signage

Michelle Fontaine

Michelle Fontaine, Library Teacher, Marblehead
Epstein Hillel School, Marblehead
Finding Your Way in the Library: Using student-created library signage

This project is popular among the students, and they look forward to it when it's their turn. I like it because it adds color and energy to the library space.

When I joined Epstein Hillel School in the fall of 2021, the new library had been open for only a little over a year, and that year was at the height of Covid. The walls were blank except for one poster of the US Presidents from ABDO. I also noticed that most students were not sure about the layout of the library and how to find books by call number in the new space.

To help the students feel some ownership and belonging in the library, as well as better understand the concept of sections, I had 3rd and 4th graders decorate signs with examples from each section. Third graders decorated the Dewey (largely non-fiction) signs, and fourth graders decorated the other sections, such as Picture Books, Biography, Fiction, and Early Readers. I created the signs with the words ahead of time and used the Wheel of Names website to determine which pre-made team was assigned to which sign/section. The students’ instructions were to look in their section, choose books, subjects, or characters to highlight, then draw, write, and/or choose book covers to include on the sign.

This is now the third year we've done this, and I've made some changes along the way:

• The first year, I just wrote the sections in regular printed font. The words got lost among the pictures, so I made them thicker in subsequent years.
• Some teams needed a reminder that the books/subjects/characters pictured should correspond to the books found in their sections so that they wouldn't be confusing.
• Some teams needed to be shown explicitly how the signs would be hung because they made some pictures upside down. Not a big deal, really, but also not exactly what all of them were hoping for.
• The second year, the then-fifth graders were affronted that their signs were being replaced. The fourth graders got over it because they were creating new ones. This year, I let them know that the signs would be replaced by next year's #-graders.

Plans for next year:

• I think that fourth grade might be better suited to the Dewey sections; the Dewey organization concept is still a little elusive for third graders in the middle of the year.
• Despite bolding and underlining the relevant letters indicating each section (such as ER and B), it is still not obvious to most catalog users that those letters correspond with the top of the call numbers. I'm still working on how to solve that. If you have any ideas, please pass them along!

Try this project in your library

• Depending on how large your school is, this might be a better project for a Library Team or volunteers. Older students could probably do a more comprehensive job with representing what could be found in each Dewey section or perhaps focus on getting representation from many genres in the fiction section.
  
• Materials: All you really need is butcher paper, cardboard, or other paper to protect the surface below the paper, and a collection of Sharpies, markers, crayons, and colored pencils.
  
• For the book covers, you will need scissors and tape or glue sticks as well as the ability to print in color on short notice.