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World book day(s)! at St Mungo’s library

Why celebrating “world book” for a day when we can do it for an entire WEEK!

From the 28th of February till the 4th of March, the St Mungo’s library had a full program of book festivities to give the chance to every pupils in the school to celebrate.

 

The daily S1 library visits enjoyed a very special scavenger hunt made for the occasion. Every participants received a book token to get a free book from their favourite bookshop in town.

 

At lunch, the library helpers worked hard to display all the free books we received for the occasion and made sure to spread the love of reading among the school.

What will be book festivities without any competitions?!

We had two exciting competitions running that week:

The book cover competition designed by some of our Higher and S3 Elective young people in partnership with the Art department.

Here are the three winners:

 

The bookface competition with very creative S3 pupils.

Here are some fantastic entries:

 

And finally at lunch, the library “display committee” had the responsibility to count the votes for the Scottish Teen Book prize.

They really embraced the task!

World book day(s!) was a huge success at St Mungo’s with more than 500 tokens given away to actual and potential readers!

White Water Writers Signing Event at Lochend

To celebrate our S3 writers’ achievement in writing and publishing a novel in five days, we held a signing event on World Book Day. Teachers, friends and parents were invited and cakes were provided! 🙂 Many thanks again to Yvonne and Dan at White Water Writers for providing our young people with this opportunity.

https://whitewaterwriters.com/

 

World Book Day Celebration

Hello!

March means World Book Day. This means holding great celebration in our school, here are some of things we did.

Our library assistants Jude and Abdul organised a super fun Book Quiz, that had a wonderful participation!Picture of the library full of young people taking part to the book quiz for WBD.

Only for the library assistants, Ms Spaltro organised a treasure hunt inspired and with the book character Wally. And here’s one for you, can you find Wally in this post?

At the event, we also announced the three library assistants of the month. They have been chosen because of their great commitment to the library, but also the support they have given to other library users. The three young people awarded have also been behind the scenes of many very successful events, such as Harry Potter Night etc.

Library Assistant of the month badge.

Here’s the comment from Jack, one of the library assistants of the month about the whole celebration:

Wally from the book Where's Wally?

“We had a great time at the library. We played a fun game on blooket, we had a “Were’s Wally” hunt around the library and we all got to take a book or two home.”

As we believe that also teachers should be involved in World Book Day celebration, we organised a free book station for them, to get a copy of two wonderful CPD books.

Teachers' CPD board and free book to collect.

These are only some of the different activities and displays we arranged around the school, please check out Twitter feed if you want to know more.

Happy Reading!

Readathon

Our brilliant Literacy Prefects organised a Sponsored Readathon from Friday the 11th of February until Friday the 25th of February. Eastbank Academy pupils and staff read as many books as they could while being sponsored by their friends, families or teachers.

All money collected was donated to MindOut – a charity working to improve the mental health and well-being of the LGBTQ+ community.

LGBT History Month Competition

Smithycroft Library and English department are organising a special competition for LGBT History Month this year. By reading and reviewing a book from the library “Read with Pride” display or e-book/audiobook from Libby, you can earn house points and help your house beat the opponents!

Remember to collect a review form and a free bookmark from the Library.

Thanks to everyone who already submitted their review, but don’t worry if you haven’t already – you still have time to earn house points! Deadline is end of March 😊

May the best house (and reader) win!

STA World Book Day and Newsletter!

March doesn’t just mean that spring is finally on our doorstep. It also means World Book Day fun and a new library newsletter!

World Book Day celebrates its 25 year anniversary this month, so we thought it would be fun to highlight books in the library that were published in the last 25 years (and no, somehow that does NOT mean 1975).

The library newsletter this month also celebrates World Book Day, with loads of recommendations. Be sure to also check out the other notable dates for March!

Glasgow School Libraries eMagazine

The Spring edition of Swatch is now here! The new edition of our Glasgow School Libraries eMagazine features a fab interview with our very own author, Melissa Cassidy. Pupils from Hillpark asked Mel about her inspiration for writing a book, the process for getting it published, and what advice she has for young aspiring writers. The eMag is also packed full of book reviews, author interviews, pupil contributions, and all the latest news from schools across Glasgow. Check it out here: https://online.fliphtml5.com/kukmo/hjud/#p=1

Holyrood library – ‘Book chat with S6, and World Book Day fun’

This month we’re chatting to some of our wonderful S6 Pupils about books and reading. Thank you S6 for sharing these thoughts.

Taiba : “I like reading because it allows me to stand in other peoples’ shoes and experience someone else’s life for a while. I always struggled to decide what I wanted to pursue at university. Reading books written by many different professionals in their careers, such as ‘When Breath Becomes Air‘ made me feel  I could make a more educated choice. Reading has also prepared me for the university application process and has given me things to talk about in interviews”.

Manisa: “For me, reading helps me escape reality and also helps me be more creative. I got into reading by finding my types of books in the school library. Reading gives me a perspective that I haven’t seen before”.

Maryam: “I sometimes prefer books to their movies/ TV shows because it allows my imagination to visualise the plot which is different to when a movie dictates what you see. Another thing that I like about reading is that you’re able to appreciate the thoughts of each character, and you are put in their shoes, which can be interesting!”

Holly: “You may think you don’t enjoy reading because you have always viewed it as a task, but once you find a book that you love and are interested in, it can be a perfect escape from reality”

Miss K. :  “Seeing our S6 pupils studying in the library and hearing their feedback about books is one of the best things about my job. They can often be found encouraging younger pupils and doing paired reading with S1. Thanks also for the great idea of doing a Book-Tok display. Can’t wait to get started!”

On 3rd March, we celebrated World Book Day. As part of their Literacy project, S1-S3 pupils were asked to read a book set in a country other than the UK. Some borrowed books from the school library, whole others chose to access the E-library using their I=pads. Ms Longo also ran a project asking all year groups to recommend a favourite book from a different country. This truly reflects the diverse, multi-cultural and welcoming nature of our school.

Our EAL Book Group continues to meet at lunchtimes when we have fun chatting, eating lunch and finding new books to enjoy together.

 

On library Teams, we’ve enjoyed nominating our favourite places we’d like to visit, as part of the ‘Strange Worlds Detective Agency’ competition. These have included New York; the Eiffel Tower in Paris; Italy, the Maldives, and Bali in Indonesia. I feel as if I’ve travelled the World, from my desk chair.

Thanks to all pupil helpers S1 – S6 who have contributed so much time and energy helping in the Library this month.

JPA Library – February Update

That was a cold one!

I don’t want to jinx it, but fingers crossed that the weather heats up a little as we head into Spring.

Until then, however, you can browse this library update with everything we got up to in February!

RPG Club

Due to popular demand from our pupils, we have now started a brand-new RPG Club (that’s role-playing-game for the novices amongst us).  Pupils have been working this month on creating their own Dungeons & Dragons characters, and we’ll hopefully be starting our first campaign soon!  The character creation process has been very involved, and actually temporarily taken over our Comic Club too!  However, character creation is an important part of the comic-making process so it’s all relevant!  Next month our pupils will have transformed into bards, warlocks, rangers and sorcerer’s ready to dive into as yet unknown fantasy worlds!  Keep updated with their progress in this blog.  This will be my first time as Dungeon Master and the pupils first time playing so we’ll all be learning something new while we play!

EAL Book Club

Project Cinderella continues!  Our pupils have now finished reading the three best known and classic versions of the story from France (by Charles Perrault), Italy (by Giambattista Basile) and Germany (by The Grimm Brothers).  They have been plotting their mind maps and jotting down ideas for their own twist on the story.  Now we are looking at and discussing modern adaptations of the story!  We have started with Cinderella Is Dead, by Kalynn Bayron, a dark feminist fantasy retelling that explores Cinderella’s choice in the story, and Gender Swapped Fairy Tales, by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett, looking at how changing gender could change the story.  We are all agreed – glass trainers are probably more comfortable than glass heels, but still entirely impractical.

Volunteers

 

Our library volunteers have formed a great wee team and have been working hard in the library throughout February.  They have helped create great displays, such as this one for LGBT+ History Month, and have done their best to make sure the library stays tidy and organised.  I am very grateful for all their help!

One of our volunteers has gone above and beyond, and has made a new mascot for the library – please meet Bellamy Book Bear!  Bellamy is now a part of the library team and has loads of book suggestions (such as these ‘beary’ good bear-themed books (and yes, you can expect a lot more un’bear’able puns from me!)).

Blind Date With A Book

For Valentine’s Day, the library had a Blind Date With A Book display!  Pupils were able to read the first line of a book, and a couple bullet points of information about it, before borrowing, and plenty of pupils got involved!  It might not have always been love at first line, but we had fun either way! 

March is set to be another exciting month, now that we have four clubs on the go and World Book Day to celebrate!  You can check out everything that’s coming up in the March edition of Bookmarked – the school library newsletter.