We are delighted to share with you details of our recent Book Week and also the exciting World Book Day celebrations which took place last week in school. There was a full programme of events and activities, as we enjoyed a week filled with authors, books, competitions, costumes, crafting … just to mention a few.
The week began with a real buzz as the Library ran a Mindfulness competition in collaboration with PSHE, and also a Design a Book Token competition with the Art Department. Frobisher House listened to a short assembly delivered by Mrs Dewhurst, prior to a fundraising event for the author Tommy Donbavand. A delightful and creative bookmark craft workshop with Serendipity Finch took place and the World Book Day book token exchange was a huge success.
Also during Book Week, the English Department engaged in 5 minutes of personal reading as a starter to each lesson and also made good use of the World Book Day masterclass author videos. Mrs Perkins hosted an extra special Writing Club where pupils had to create a novella in just 30 minutes, which was easily achieved.
Then on Thursday 7th March, it was time to celebrate the annual World Book Day. To launch the day, the whole school took part in the ever-popular DEAR event (drop everything and read) a reading initiative which ran right from Reception through to Sixth Form. At 09:30 the school bell rang and for 10 minutes the whole of school were reading at the same time – what a truly remarkable experience. Reading for Pleasure (RfP) certainly was working at its best that day. A DEAR event is a fun and informative way to help improve literacy skills and instil independent reading.
The key event of the week had to be the author visit, when Cliff McNish entertained Year groups from Year 3 right through to Year 9. It was a fabulous day, where Cliff shared his own passion for writing, offered lots of writing advice and of course promoted his books; Doomspell, Breathe, Angel, Going Home and My Friend Twigs. A lunchtime book sale with book signings also took place, with an array of pupils arriving to meet Cliff, he made time to personally chat with everyone. His books sold fast and Cliff was truly humbled at the amount of book sales.
Feedback from the week and WBD has come in fast and furious, with the author being one of the first to email in, he commented,
“I just wanted to thank you for organising yesterday’s WBD event so beautifully at QEGS. I really enjoyed meeting you, your colleagues and all of the students! Hopefully your students and staff felt it was all worthwhile. Do let the teachers know that if they do a class reader of any book I’m happy to correspond with their students on it.”
Pupils really enjoyed the whole week and it has been delightful to hear such positive feedback. Thanks must go to everyone who helped to make the week a huge success, including our parent helpers, our Catering team who put a literary menu together for World Book Day, Mrs Seedat who created a wonderful Book Week display in Singleton for our Sixth Form students, to all teachers (both Primary and Senior) who sent in photos of their DEAR event and to all pupils/students for their contributions. It really was a whole school celebration, including the delightful little ones in QEGS Nursery who also dressed up for the occasion.
This week see’s the annual House QUEST in the Library, a fun quest, mission, hunt with lots of treasure to pick up along the way.
To find out more about our Book Week and all of our other Library events – please visit
https://www.facebook.com/QegsLibraryBlackburn/
It has just been confirmed and we are pleased to announce our Book Week author booking for 2020 will be with Kjartan Poskitt, author of Murderous Maths.