Book Week Roundup

Despite it being a very busy week, with the Easter egg competition and sports day among other events taking place, the Swans students still found time to go loco for literature during our first Book Week (we´ve historically only had a day).

In the library we had daily quizzes to test our students book smarts, we also launched the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire challenge which dares students to read a million words in 2014.  There is still time to take up the challenge, and you can enter both as an individual and as a form group – there will be prizes for the first to reach the goal in each category. On Wednesday we had the Book Swap which was a great success thanks in no small part to the students who took part, going home to seek out suitable books to trade and coming to spend their tokens with great enthusiasm at our special stall.

We hope to do this again next year, and since there were so many students heard to say that they wished they had participated, we expect it to be even bigger and better next time around.

One of the most exciting projects here in the library was the Great Swans Novel, which challenged students to write a novel in just a week, by writing as a collective.  The huge enthusiasm of their students, as well as their impressive creativity, imagination and humour meant that the novel all but wrote itself, and, having had a sneak preview, the library can report that it is a roller-coaster of a read!  It covers just about every genre from romance to fantasy to crime to horror, and definitely verges on the surreal, but it certainly isn´t boring.  The library will now work on editing and publishing the masterpiece so stay tuned to this blog for news of its progress.

Outside of the library, the English department spent this week going even more bonkers for books than usual by holding readathons in lessons (complete with comfy cushions and snacks) and holding the annual book trailer competition.  The climax of this took place during our final Book Week assembly, during which we got to watch the best ones which were judged and marked so that a winner could be chosen.  Choosing a winner was a difficult job indeed, given the standard of all the trailers into which the students had put so much hard work.  They were really accomplished – acted with commitment, approached with creativity and originality, and slickly produced and edited to boot!  All the staff were delighted with the amount of time, effort and passion the students had put in, as well as the level of teamwork demonstrated in achieving the outcome.  It´s amazing what you can achieve when you feel really passionate about something.  Well done to all the key stage three students who took part.

The next event was the nail-biting finale of the annual Spelling Bee.    Students were tested with some incredibly hard words including one that managed to fell all of the remaining runners bar one, our winner, a student from Year 6!  She took home the fabulous prize of a kindle, and an enormous sense of pride.

So that was Book Week and the library would like to thank all the students, staff and teachers for their continuing enthusiasm for all things literary.  And so, until it returns next year (hopefully even bigger and better than ever) we bid a fond farewell to Book Week.  Except we don´t, not really, because as any of our users know... in the Swans School Library every week is a book week!