Drop Everything and Read (Infant and Junior School)
Books and reading were the stars of the show when the Infant and Junior schools celebrated World Book Day. The build up to the day saw a t-shirt design competition, which was won by Leena Makhdum, 3D. The t-shirts were sold to raise money for The Book Bus, a mobile library charity in Africa. David Brandreth, on behalf of the School, will be presenting them with estimated proceeds of BD1125. He said “We wanted to support school children in underdeveloped countries that do not have access to books. The Book Bus struck me as a most inspirational charity”.
The library ran a bookmark competition, the winners were Ethan Styles, 2B, and Naseema Malik, 4D, and the Year 1 children designed book covers for children at the Senior School to work with.
The day itself began with ‘The Big Read’, a whole school event on the tiger turf that included paired reading, story reading from a stage and a storytelling drama finale. Throughout the rest of the day, the children enjoyed book-related activities in class, and twice had to ‘drop everything and read’ after an announcement over the tannoy system. Maddie,1D said, “I loved reading with the Year 5’s. My partner was so good at reading.” Sarah Hamill, Year 2 teacher added, “The Big Read was absolutely fabulous. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
Whose Line is it Anyway? (Senior School)
Thursday 7 March was a very busy day for the Senior School. Not only were there all the usual lessons, but Year 11, 12 and 13 had the added complication of the release of modular examination results. Even so, we still managed to find opportunities to mark World Book Day.
During Enrichment lessons, many Form Groups worked together to write engaging story openings using the first lines of existing novels as their starting point. As this was run as a competition, students will have to wait for the results, but on first look 9F’s entry will prove VERY hard to beat!
In addition, Year 7 enjoyed a madcap, book-inspired scavenger hunt in the library. A number of Key Stage 3 classes also composed enticing blurb to accompany Year 1’s magical book cover designs.
Finally, everyone had the chance to vote for the book with the X Factor. It was great to see some of 19th and 20th century classics like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men on the list. Perhaps, interest has been renewed by the recent film, but The Life of Pi made a good showing. Popular authors were Robert Muchamore, Jody Picoult, JRR Tolkien, Suzanne Collins and Jeff Kinney. But it came down to three. Whilst many students nominated novels by Darren Shan and JK Rowling, few agreed on which title was the best. So, the book with the most votes and therefore the X Factor is…Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
