Book Week 2014
Each year The Children’s Book Council of Australia focuses on the literature published in Australia in the previous year. The celebration of Book Week is dedicated to spreading the word about children’s literature and encouraging the joys of reading. This event is one practise our school community embraces to focus on our personal reading behaviours.
This year the Book Week theme, Connect to Reading, inspired our school community to reflect on the ways we connect to what we choose to read. Throughout the week the students were engaged in a variety of school-based activities that not only focused on reading but also considered the connection to writing because without one we couldn’t have the other.
With Connection as our focus for the week, the boys contributed to several activities that encouraged examining our personal connections to Australian literature and writing. Class groups studied several of the short-listed books creating a response to the literature. The students considered their personal connections to these books (text-to-self), connections to other literature that they have read or seen (text-to-text), as well as connections to things that are happening or have happened globally (text-to-world). Through posters, each class reflected on how they, as a class, connect to reading.
To emphasise the connection of writing to reading and, to accentuate our community of readers, the students participated in writing The Never Ending Story. Kindergarten designed and wrote the beginning of a story titled Explore. This was passed onto each grade consecutively to continue and Year Six wrote the conclusion to the story.
The most anticipated part of our Book Week celebrations must be the Book Week Character Parade. This year all were encouraged to represent a book character with which we had a connection. What a terrific time! What a parade of characters!
Sue Gough – Teacher Librarian
