National Poetry Day: National Poetry Day – an annual UK-wide celebration of poetry now on its 25th year. This year’s theme is ‘Truth’. We’ve handed out FREE official National Poetry Day postcards. As it’s the UNESCO Year of Indigenous Languages, the featured ‘truth’ poems are written in Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Scots, and Gaelic alongside their English translations. We’re also promoting these amazing YA titles written in verse. Download the list here: Books in Verse Reading List
Participatory Workshops: Over the course of October, the Library worked with various S2-S4 English classes on selecting books for the library. This year’s emphasis is on acquiring more accessible stock that will appeal to a broad range of readers. We targeted publishers Barrington Stoke and Badger Learning websites.
Barrington Stoke is a Scottish company who publishes books written by well-known authors that are suitable for different types of readers using specially designed dyslexia-friendly font and layout as well as printing the text on cream paper to reduce glare. The stories are short length than standard novels and designed for Reading Ages and Interest Ages. The language is specially edited to improve accessibility.
Badger Learning is a UK-based publisher who specialise in shorter length fiction for Young People. Like Barrington Stoke, stories are designed for Reading Ages and Interest Ages. Teen Reads, Two Sides, and YA Reads are different series published by Badger that includes a range of genres and themes.
Classes logged onto the Library’s PCs and were guided through the websites by the Librarian. Pupils were instructed peruse the titles and features of the website then list what books they thought would be good for the Library to stock. The Librarian correlated the data. See February’s post for the results. Pupils found the activity fun and made them feel included in the decision making of the Library
Bookopoly –St Oswalds: The Library has been working with St Oswald’s English Department as part of the school’s FMRC. Bookopoly has been rolled out to all St Oswald’s pupils. This reading challenge encourages participants to explore genres and non-fiction subjects. Pupils are given their Bookopoly board. Each ‘property’ (or, ‘genre’) is colour coded on the board. Participants must read two books per genre (or one non-fiction book per subject) to collect their genre badge and have their name put into the end of the year prize draw. Further chances to win can be achieved by completing a ‘Chance’ block. This could be a recommendation from the teacher, the Librarian, a book that’s over 300 pages, etc. Participants can record their progress and opinion on the books they’ve read on the back of their Bookopoly board.
