Hold a library scavenger hunt, where the students look for certain information throughout the library's resources; this teaches the students what resources are available. Instruct the kids to find the following (adjust for your students): a magazine with the color blue in the picture, a book about cats, the author who wrote "Meridian" (Alice Walker) and a book of maps. For each item, the student must write down the relevant information, such as the author's name, the title of the piece and the call number.
In addition to a full library scavenger hunt, you can create an Internet scavenger hunt, which introduces sixth graders to the library's Internet resources. You may want to structure your scavenger hunt in the same form as the worksheet provided by Dr. Arlys E. Peterson of the University of Sioux Falls Education Department: list a website and a thing to find on that website, such as "Find an article on balloon animals at Celebrations.com."
Introduce students to Shakespeare and the reference section of the library by playing a "weird word game," inspired by information from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Create a list of words, for which the students must write down the definitions. Use interesting or difficult words from Shakespearean English, such as: bedazzle, boggler, hurly burly and oppugnancy. At the end of the library activity, read a few of Shakespeare's poems or some easier stanzas from a play, discussing what the literary works mean.
Use a thesaurus to teach about synonyms and the library's reference section. To do this, create a list of words and provide a blank next to each word. The students must then find a synonym for each word. For extra credit, provide the option to define the synonym and look for slight differences in meaning or application between the two words, sometimes called "shades of meaning."