Book Week Scotland took place from Monday 19 – Sunday 25 November 2018. We are dedicated to promoting reading for pleasure and we enjoyed the excuse to drop everything and read!
Here are just some of the great events that took place over Book Week Scotland:
- The English department ran a sponsored Readathon for all S1-S2 pupils.
- S1 and S2 pupils who we made significant progress in reading, are avid readers or have shown signs of sustained effort in Literacy attended the ‘Book Bistro’ where they read as they sipped hot chocolate with marshmallows.
- the winners of our ‘Rebel’ creative writing contest were announced with Sarah in S1 and Hannah in S2 declared the winners. Robert and Mason (S1) and the Chelsea and Chelsea (S2) were runners up.
- Comic Book Club talked about some of our excellent Scottish comic book and graphic novelists.
- We hosted a ‘Drop Everything and Read’ event across the school where pupils were encouraged to read books, comics, revision notes, class textbooks … the aim was to get as many pupils reading in as many subjects as possible whilst learning at the same time.
- There was also be a reading lunch for S3-S6 in the library at lunchtime.
- Staff were treated to copies of the free “Rebel” short story collection produced by the Scottish Book Trust.
- The week ended with a special Scottish book group meeting at lunchtime.
Next week Book Week Scotland is taking place from Monday 19 – Sunday 25 November 2018 and Calderhead High School are hosting many exciting activities to celebrate.
Pupils from our Advanced Higher and Higher English classes visited the Edinburgh International Book Festival at Charlotte Square in Edinburgh recently. The pupils enjoyed listening to three very different authors at the Festival: Melvin Burgess, Taran Matharu and Martin Stewart
The first session was with the Melvin Burgess, an author who is often described as the “godfather” of Young Adult fiction. Melvin talked about his prolific and often controversial writing and read excerpts from his latest novel, ‘The Lost Witch’ .
After lunch, pupils listened to authors Taran Matharu and Martin Stewart, who talked about their writing. Taran started writing online and soon gained a massive readership which led to the publication of his ‘Summoner’ series.
Pupils in S1 and S2 were encouraged to participate in the BBC’s “500 Word” competition recently. This competition was devised by Chris Evans to get children excited about reading and writing, no matter what their ability. Entrants must submit a story of 500 words or less and this is now one of the most successful story-writing competitions in the world. Three quarters of a million children have taken part over the years. Pupils met with Mr Reilly in the library at lunchtime and created some wonderful stories on all sorts of different themes: sentient computers, crime stories, mysteries, and superheroes, to name but a few.
However, we did manage to rearrange the ‘Book and Biccie’ lunchtime session in the school library and it was a lovely way to celebrate the joy of reading (and biscuits!) at the end of term.
Pupils were also invited to take part in a “Share a Story” competition by submitting a review of their favourite book and why they recommended that everyone should read it. There were many fabulous reviews and Mrs Lumsden and Ms Faulds struggled to decide the winner. However, they agreed that Kevin’s review of the Skulduggery Pleasant series should win first prize and Lauren and Jack were worthy runners up with their excellent reviews. Thank you to Mrs Galloway for presenting the prizes.
upils recently participated in a writing competition with Young Writers, an organisation which aims to encourage and inspire children to engage in creative writing. Their ‘Welcome to Wonderland’ challenge asked students to write a story about a fictional world using just 100 words. We are delighted to announce that S2 pupils, Kenzie and Jennifer, were successful and their stories will be included in a book which will be published next year. Well done, girls!