How I Handle Study Halls in the HS Library

This is a question that comes up a lot on some of my message boards, so I decided to actually write out the process and how I handle study hall students in my HS Library.

When I first started, they were using a pass systems. Each pass had a number and each study hall could send a certain number of students per period. When I started 5 years ago, I put a big fat NOPE on that system and upgraded.

I use a Google Form system. It’s simple, really. I needed a way to see who was coming to the Library each period and not just leaving it up to the teacher. We used to have way more skippers than we do now!

I created a Google Site and then linked this site to my main Library Website. The Google Site contains all of the links to the various study hall sign ups as well as the rules I have set for study halls.

Here is an example of what each form looks like.

I use an add-on called form limiter to restrict the number of sign ups per period.

This allows me to change how many students are in the Library, especially when other classes are coming into the Library for projects.

So, on the back end…

Once a student has signed up to come the Library, their names are dumped onto a Google Sheet. We share all of those Sheets with our staff at the beginning of each marking period. They are expected to bookmark the period they have a study hall so they can check attendance. When a student comes to the Library, they check in with us at the Circ deck so we know they have arrived and we highlight their names on the spreadsheets, signaling to the teacher to mark them as “present” for their study halls.

If you take a look at the bottom of the spreadsheet, you will see that every day we create tabs with the students that were in the Library each day. It automatically defaults to the Form Responses, but then we create a new tab each each day, move the names to a new tab, and they delete the rows on the form response tabs.

We also delete the responses each day on the actual form. This allows us to use the same Google form each day for each period.

So, that’s it! Yes, there was a learning curve for my Library Assistants and our staff. But now, 5 years in, it works pretty seamlessly.

A few things:

I open up my study halls every morning at 7am. Students know this and some are refreshing the page over and over to see if their period is open.

Students MUST sign up before the beginning of the period. I will manually close them if they haven’t maxed out about 5 minutes into the period to stop any students who want to show up halfway through.

Students still can visit the Library on a pass for a short visit during the study hall so if they just need to print or grab a book they can do so.

When students arrive, they MUST stay for the entire period,

And yes, students still attempt to skip. But when a student doesn’t show we call their study hall teacher, check attendance, and try to find them. We will write them up if they can’t be found. In 5 years I’ve probably written up only around 10 students for attempting to skip.

I would love to answer any other questions you have, I hope I covered our entire process!