Category Archives: Holyrood Secondary School

Holyrood Library – Summer Roundup

Summer term has been a feast of reading and fun!

In May, we took part in ‘Keep the Heid and Read’, celebrating how reading for pleasure can improve mental health.

“Fiction books are great if you want to step away from social media for a while”. This is great advice from Mehek (S6)

In June, we celebrated Empathy Day. We chatted about how reading can take you to other worlds, and let you walk in someone else’s shoes. We selected our favourite books for Empathy and made a colourful display.

Lunchtime Reading We were delighted to win 10 copies of Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin. We hope to read and review this book together. Happy to share our spare copies!

“One girl against an Empire”

Our English dept. organised a whole school Literacy Day for S2, The mission was to solve the crime of the missing Stone of Destiny, which involved investigating and forensic science, using expertise from depts. across the school.

In the library, we created a display of detective fiction and criminology books.

We also researched the Stone of destiny and designed Wanted posters to help find it!

Zines : Mr. Kelly and Miss Johnston’s S2 classes created amazing zines in Science and made a display for readers to help themselves.

Bookmarks : Mumina and Abdul made these beautiful bookmarks as gifts to take away.

We were excited to win a copy of Hag Storm by Victoria Williamson (at a book auction to raise funds for Malawi). Great inspiration for a competition! Over 30 pupils entered ‘Name the Haggis’. The winning entry was Hector the Horse=Riding Haggis, inspired by the Tam O’Shanter theme in Victoria’s novel.

To round off the year, Holyrood was awarded Silver accreditation as a Reading School. Superb recognition of the work of our Reading Schools Committee, and all pupils and staff who promote a reading culture in the school, The library has been glowing with all the pupil care and nurturing. Congratulations to everyone, and thank you to Ms Longo for making it so much fun to work on this project with a brilliant team.

Have a great Summer everyone, and keep reading!

Holyrood Library, Spring Update

Leave a reply

Welcome to the Library blog for March and April !

Our Rights Respecting School book display showcases books on diversity, inclusion and well-being. This display was organised by one of our S6 Volunteers, who has also worked on cataloguing hundreds of books this year, a great example of our Pupil Voice and Caritas volunteering in action, thank you.

World Book Day : our S1 ‘Design a Book Token’ competition was a great success. The entries were superb, showing both a love of reading and excellent design skills. Our prize-winners enjoyed a lunchtime celebration. Special thanks to Head Girl, Maryam for presenting prizes and giving an inspiring speech to S1.

Our S3 lunchtime readers have been busy creating beautiful art, including flowers and bees to decorate our Science week Display, and bookmarks for Miss Melville’s wonderful Coffee Morning for Ukraine

We love sharing book reviews and recommendations

We even get replies from fantastic authors! “I’m so happy that Boy 87 was your book of the day. Thank you S1 helpers!”, Ele Fountain, author of Boy 87

Here is the Numeracy Wall created by Miss Blackburn’s Sumdog Club. We look forward to holding more numeracy activities in the library throughout the year.

Our S6 contribution to the library has been immense. Their helpfulness and enthusiasm, has made the library a joyful place. Thank you S6 for the Book-Tok idea, now under-way. I will continue to add new titles. Special thanks to Aaminah.

Our S6 held an amazing Culture Day in the Assembly Hall. Seeing the joy and pride in our wonderful, diverse Holyrood community has inspired me to look out for more diverse books by indigenous authors in future.

Some S1 recommendations showing different cultures, (these are set in Nigeria, and the Himalayas).

Thanks also to S6 for completing the online Library Survey, all your helpful suggestions will go towards making improvements for the coming year.

This lovely manga style drawing, (by Kieran and Demi), sums up our ethos – Everyone is WELCOME in this Library, so please DO look in and say hello next time you are passing. A warm welcome awaits.

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

Leave a reply

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 3^rd 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.

Holyrood Library – Celebrating Reading!

Leave a reply

We are off to a great start in 2022, reading a wealth of books and sharing fun times together! Here’s a look back at some highlights from last term.

Author visits

On National Poetry Day we had a visit from Anita Govan. Ms Longo’s S3 put their heart & soul into improvising and performing their own poems. Anita presented us with a copy of her book. What a fantastic day.

Alex Nye visited us for Book Week Scotland. S2 & S3 loved Alex’s ‘Art of the Ghost Story’ workshop. Miss Cameron & Mr Clarke’s classes came up with brilliant questions. A fascinating insight into being an author. Well done all!

A December highlight was a visit from Metaphrog (John & Sandra). It was amazing to learn all about the creative process. Our audience included our EAL Book Group, and our own published graphic novelists now in S4, who had worked with John and Sandra previously. It felt like a lovely family reunion.

Our EAL Book Group has gone from strength to strength. We have read 2 books, spoken different languages (I was hopeless), laughed, had fun with crafts, and visited Kelvingrove Art Galleries!

Library Helpers have been fantastic. Here are some of the book displays we have enjoyed creating.

Black History Month

Don’t judge a book by It’s cover!

Remembrance Day

We’ve made several Playground visits with our Book Trolley (September was fun, January was a bit breezy!)

To sum up, wise words from our pupils about books and libraries :

“When you are bored, you always have somewhere to come to and I also love all the books here!” Tahreem, S1

“The library is a place where I can clear my headspace, chill and have a good time” Bilal,S2

Take care all, and keep reading in 2022.

Holyrood Library – Summer Term

Leave a reply

Thank you Helpers!

Here’s a round up of some of the fun we’ve had in May/ June:

Most days start with a “Good Morning” on library Teams. We check in with each other and make sure everyone is having a good day.

We enjoyed fun quizzes for ‘Earth Day’, and ‘Oceans Day’, finding out which animals each of us resembles!

On Empathy Day we chatted about empathy and how we can look out for each other. We put up a book display of Self-help books, and recommended our favourite authors.

“I recommend self-help books because it does a lot of good for my mental health and self-esteem. I really like the author Fearne Cotton. She uses examples that I can relate to” (S3 Pupil)

We made a Book display for Euro 2021, and prepared books to give to our visiting P7 pupils.

Our Library Helpers have been fantastic, whether helping with book displays, activities, or just chilling out with friends,

Thank you so much to everyone who has borrowed books, helped out either in person or on library Teams or simply just been there for company. Thanks also to Laraib and Fiza our Duke of Edinburgh helpers. You have all been amazing!

Can’t wait to see everyone next year and have even more fun.

Bon Voyage!

Holyrood Library – Spring update

Leave a reply

We started our Library Teams page in February to keep in touch and share book chat. All activities were organised or led by S1-3 pupils. What a fantastic time we’ve had! Thank you to everyone in our Team, both for contributing, and reading along during lockdown. Hope you all had fun!

Competitions

Our first competition, created by Zara, was ‘Create your own Character’. Our prizewinning entries came from Rose K. & Sahar (S1), and Brenna (S2).

Rose (S1)

We loved the skill shown in Rose’s drawing and how the character matched the description.

Sahar (S1)

Sahar: An excellent character and description, great imagination in choosing to make the character a villain!

Brenna (S2)

Fantastic use of description and colour in Brenna’s drawing to bring this character to life.

Our next competition idea came from Rose ‘Tell your favourite story with a Twist’. Cillian used his knowledge of Tom Gates, to come up with an alternative ending, involving Tom’s mum.

We also enjoyed making Origami bookmarks . So impressed by B. M’s bookmark:

As we’ve all been doing more cooking during lockdown, we started looking at Recipe Books.

Eman, Anna and Bilal came up with some brilliant ideas for recipes, I enjoyed trying out these ideas for a Toasted sandwich , Feta Pasta bake and Ms Longo made this great find of an easy to make version of Gulab jamun (I’ve still to try this – it looks wonderful)!

Next we shared our Favourite books. Here are some of the titles that Anna, Zara, & Abdul recommend.

Harry Potter, the Faraway Tree and Dork diaries and Percy Jackson series are also firm favourites.

Anna’s Quiz was a highlight and kept us entertained throughout an entire day. There was much discussion and we had fun trying to come up with our answers. What a brilliant quizmaster! Bilal edged a win, closely followed by Rose, Zara (and Ms Longo and I did pretty well too I’m pleased to say)! Everyone was very sporting in providing clues and congratulating one another.

Our last activity before the holiday break was ‘Re-create your favourite Book Cover’, Eman drew this stunning mosaic style version of ‘The Girl who Lost her Shadow’, which got a lovely comment from author Emily Ilett.

Thank you to Ms Longo for the wonderful video to help us access Glasgow Libraries eBooks.

https://video.link/w/CUfhc

I now can’t wait to chat to all our team members in person to say a huge well done for all your work.

Also, a big thank you to our wonderful S3 Duke of Edinburgh pupils Laraib and Fiza who helped set up the Team and continued to add advice and ideas all the way through; and thank you also to Sarah, Miya, Nida and Chantelle. We wish you every success in completing your Duke of Edinburgh challenges.

Other activities Jan – March

The Library was used as one of the Hubs for our KW pupils. It was lovely to meet colleagues from other depts. and also to see the library resources still being used for research. Our helpful pupils also took an occasional break from classwork to help me unpack and review the new books.

They also decorated our Staff CLPL Library. What wonderful artwork! We wanted to make the most of the fantastic books ordered by Miss Callan, so we made bookmarks for our teachers. Thank you Jodie for printing the bookmark templates.

We enjoyed some Easter craft activities on the last day of term.

Look forward to seeing everyone back in the Library soon. Remember : face coverings, clean hands and surfaces, and keep a good distance so that we can all stay safe!

Holyrood Secondary Library, Book Week Scotland

Leave a reply

Book Week Scotland, 16th -22nd November

Pupil review

Here is our first pupil recommendation from Fatima S3, who does superb work helping out in the Library setting up book displays, and helping with crafts for the younger pupils. She is almost half way through this book by wonderful Scottish author Lindsay Littleson.

“I recommend ‘The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean’. I really enjoyed reading it. It talks about summer, family and friends”.

We’ve also been using books to find out about Millport, which is the setting for part of this really exciting story.

We hope that other pupils will read this book, and also the next book by Lindsay Littleson, called ‘The Awkward Autumn of Lily McLean’

Here at Holyrood, Book Week Scotland is one of the highlights of our year ! We can’t wait to get started with celebrating books and reading, and join in the fun with authors, book lovers and the reading community all over Scotland!

We hope to be joining in with some of the online events listed here:

Book Week Scotland programme of events

In addition, we will be reading, sharing books, and holding our own celebration events all week:

How many Scottish authors and books set in Scotland can we read? There may also be some pupil book reviews!

Competition for S1 – design your own mini-book on a Scottish theme Collect an instruction sheet from the Library…. easy and fun! All entries will be displayed in the Library and you could win a prize.
Senior pupils will be reading stories from this anthology of writing about the ‘Future’. You can collect your free copy from the Library. Happy reading!

We will be sharing some of our work in pictures and writing all through the week, and hope that as many pupils and staff as possible will join us to celebrate Book Week Scotland

Holyrood Secondary #LibrariesWeek

Leave a reply

To celebrate #LibrariesWeek 6th-10th October, this blog has been written by one of our most enthusiastic and book – loving classes: Miss Belton’s S3 English Class, who are pleased to share their book recommendations with you.

Jared “My favourite book is The Avatar. As it was the only book in this series in the library, I also had to borrow other books. The library is fun because most of the books are fun to read, and this makes your reading better. I hope that you will try to read more too”.

Fantastic advice, thank you Jared.

Sawdah is one of our most enthusiastic readers and it is always great to see her in the Library. “My favourites include Cry Baby, the Story of Tracy Beaker, and the Dockside series, because there are so many titles in the series to read!”

Abdou “The book that I like reading is the Last Kids on Earth series by Max Brailler. It’s a book about monster zombies and kids surviving the apocalypse”.

Thanks to Abdou, other pupils have now enjoyed this series too!

Azeem likes “ all the Roald Dahl books, also comic books, and books about football”.

Denis and Mahmod both enjoyed a book that they read in class The Housekeeper’s Lunch – “this book was really funny and great because the housekeeper couldn’t have his lunch because the crows ate it all”.

Faizan says “My favourite book is Five Famous Fairy Tales”, This is a superb choice, containing tales by Hans Anderson and brothers Grimm. Abdullah recommends history books, and he has read many history and other non-fiction titles.

Fatima says “my favourite book is Dork Diaries. I like to read them because they are fun to read”. This is a very popular choice

This dedicated Class is always up for a challenge, and successfully completed last year’s Glasgow Libraries Christmas Reading Challenge, receiving certificates to mark their outstanding achievement.

As an experiment, we also tried reading as a Book Group – our chosen titles were Under the Skin, by Cathy Macphail, and the Fastest Boy in the World, by Elizabeth Laird. However, we decided that we preferred reading our own choice of books (although we do still like to have quiet discussion and share ideas together).

Miss Kindness, Librarian says “It has been a pleasure to see how this class have grown in enthusiasm and confidence over the past two years. I look forward to more fun projects and reading challenges with them”.

We would all like to say a big thank you to Miss Belton for all her patience, and enthusiasm, and for making the time for us to go to the library.

We hope you have a wonderful retirement and enjoy more time to read books and have new adventures.”.

Holyrood School Library – Summer Update (4)

Leave a reply

Amnesty Poetry Project

During Feb – March, Mrs Cooper’s senior EAL pupils took part in the Amnesty International Project ‘Words That Burn‘. This opportunity was made available to us by Amnesty International, Glasgow Libraries, and SLIC/ SLIF funding.

Our journey started when we attended our first ever Poetry slam at the Mitchel Library. Unsure what to expect, within minutes, we were completely enthralled by poets Cat Hepburn, Jenny Lindsay and Tawona Sitole. We could see that poetry could be both powerful, entertaining, and fun. We were so interested to hear Tawona, who is originally from Zimbabwe, speak (and sing) some poetry in his mother tongue. As many of our pupils are multi-lingual, we hoped the project would help us to celebrate and showcase these language skills.

Following this, we had visits at Holyrood from : Ash Dickinson – poet, performer and slam champion. Ash not only performed for us, but encouraged us to think about how to shape our own performances, with some excellent advice, coaching and video clips. Our next visitor was Pauline from Amnesty International. Pauline explained some of the great work that Amnesty do on human rights, and set some questions to help our team progress with their own poem.

Inspired by these workshops, the group began serious work on writing and perfecting their poem. This involved several lunchtime and after school sessions, working with the amazing Mrs. Cooper, who loves poetry. This showed great commitment as all already had busy schedules preparing for exams. However, it’s often the case that the most important learning takes place through extra-curricular activities and group projects, and our Team were growing in confidence, forging strong friendships and supporting each other in this challenge.

The day of the performance came, and we arrived at the beautiful venue of the St. Frances Centre in the Gorbals, determined to do our best.

The performance was a great success. Our team of 6 were: Rafia, Arooj, Aiman, Yasmine, Hamdi, and Kiaiyan, who gave a magnificent performance, using (at least) 7 languages, in their powerful poem ‘Fly Away Home’. They were highly commended by the judges, and could rightly feel very proud of this achievement.

Mrs Cooper and the team have now set up a lockdown Poetry club, and we hope to continue enjoying poetry together. The project was at times a little scary, challenging but mostly enjoyable. We also enjoyed hearing the performances of pupils from Govan High, Hillpark Secondary and Lourdes Secondary, and we wish them well in their future poem writing.

Our thanks go to Ash and all the poets; to Pauline, and also to Ian and Fiona from Glasgow Libraries for judging the poetry slam and organising all these great events for us. Also…..huge thanks and well done to Mrs. Cooper and our incredible pupils for all their hard work, and ‘nerves of steel’ in performing for the first time!

Find out more about the Amnesty project:

Amnesty International ‘Words that Burn’

Holyrood School Library, Summer update (3)

Leave a reply

Visit from Emily Ilett

Summer term was very different from usual, with pupils and staff doing fantastic work in lockdown. Many pupils have been using Glasgow Life e-resources such as BorrowBox , for e-books and audio-books, and Freegal for music streaming. However, nothing can quite replace the fun of real author coming to visit you, so we decided to get help from the best of the best : Emily Ilett, award winning local author, in a remote LiveLit event supported by the Scottish Book Trust!

Emily had already been out to visit Holyrood pupils, and gave a brilliant talk to Miss Sutherland’s S1 class back in March for World Book Day

We learned about one of Emily’s favourite subjects – ‘Sea animals’, and how she used her love of animals and conservation as inspiration for her book ‘The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow’.

The challenge for our remote event in June was, with the school building closed, and no physical contact – how could we get Emily to the pupils, so we could have fun, hear all of her great tips for writing, and do a pupil Q & A? The answer was …..an author video, made especially for Holyrood pupils. In it Emily reads a wonderful short story ‘Hello Neighbour’ which she wrote for lockdown (it’s very funny, especially the bit about the wasps’ nest….you’ll have to listen and I bet it will make you laugh!). She also answered terrific questions from Zoya, Nga and Augustina; and set a competition for us. The competition is now closed for the summer, but we might open it again next term – so you could have a wee practice if you’re bored during the holidays!

You can watch Emily’s video here. Just scan the QR code with your I-pad. (Big thanks to Mrs. Gunn for explaining to me how to do this). See – everyone is learning new skills here – pupils/ teachers/ librarian. You never stop learning, and it’s exciting!

There was a tight deadline to get competition entries in by the end of term, many of you rose to the challenge with magnificent entries. Winners were : Ella S1, Laraib and Eseosa (S2), and Augustina (S3). Emily was highly impressed by the entries. Great work from everyone who entered. We may try to make the winning entries into a short story collection for you to read. In the meantime, you can read ‘Hello Neighbour’, and more short stories and poems in this fantastic anthology by Cranachan publishing:

Read ‘Stay at Home’ here

Great fun for pupils, and includes resources for teachers!

See how many authors you already recognise, and you will also discover new favourite authors to enjoy. We will (hopefully) have many new books in the Library by the time you return to school.