Brilliant Book Week

Brilliant Book Week ran from Monday 4th – Friday 8th March in the Preparatory School. Our theme this year was Time to Share focusing on the importance of daily reading and encouraging our pupils to read aloud to/with someone to enhance the experience. Dr Seuss said: “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book”, so our pupils focused on the magic of being transported into another place, following the lives of characters in both fiction and factual reading and developing their confidence as readers through a variety of themed programmes. We are grateful to Explore Learning who lead a number of literacy workshops with P1-P7. Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 classes explored traditional fairy tales and composed alternative endings – was the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood really bad or just “misunderstood”? Key Stage 2 developed their persuasive language as they marketed useless products – anyone for a used colouring book?

 Prep 5 visited the Lisburn Road library on World Book Day for a special story session. A highlight of the week however, was our paired reading activity. Junior classes joined with an older age group to visit the College library to select a short story they could have read to them by their older ‘reading buddy’. It was wonderful to see the excitement and enthusiasm around this partnered reading and to watch the older pupils’ confidence grow as they modelled excellent reading skills to their partner.

 As always, our World Book Day character dress-up was eagerly supported and we were delighted to see how much thought and effort had gone into the costume designs this year. Thank you to all pupils – and staff! – who participated.