About Our Library
A Vibrant Learning Environment
Every student and staff member has a library card and can borrow library books for up to a two week period. Every student in the school has a weekly library period taught by a certified school librarian. During this special time, younger students have the opportunity to explore great books and older students learn vital 21st century learning skills including research, collaboration, and communication skills.
Alhamdulillah, we have a wonderful library facility which is located on the top floor of the the school. One side of the library is furnished with soft seating for independent reading, a large colorful carpet for storytime, and a stage for presentations. A SMART Board, television, and sound system are available for a rich media experience. The other side of the library is furnished with tables and chairs that can be arranged to accommodate independent workers, tutoring sessions, small group project work, and large group classroom instruction.
We have a functioning library that is fully automated: all resources are catalogued on a database software that also has a search engine and keeps circulation records. Over the past few years, we have catalogued 6000 books, both fiction and non-fiction. Many of these books have come from our old library, from generous donors, and used book sales. Many more are brand new books that we have earned as commission on sales from our monthly Scholastic Reading Club flyers and from our Scholastic Book Fairs.
We have a diverse collection of books. To instill the love of reading, we have board books for preschoolers, picture books for our kindergartners, early readers for our grade 1's, chapter books for our grade 2's, 3's, and 4's, and novels for our older students. We strive to introduce our students to both popular series in order to get our students hooked on reading and classic and award-winning books in order to expose them to the best that literature has to offer.
To aid the students in research, we are building our non-fiction section with the goal of having books that support the Canadian curriculum and help them grow in their knowledge of Islam. We have a Reference section with encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, and almanacs.
We are off to a good start, but we still have work to do. We are now ready to focus on the technology component of our library media centre and hope to have a laptop cart with a class set of laptops that can be checked out and used by the students. We also are looking at ways to further support our students’ education by offering printing services, ebooks, research databases, and video cameras. While we do have many Islamic books, we would like to offer more Islamic Books for our children and to increase and automate our Arabic book collection. We are also working on cataloguing a Teacher Resource section.
Would you like to help us grow? We are always looking for book donations and volunteers. Don't hesitate to contact us to see how you can help us create the best library ever, inshallah.