The theme of this year was ‘Getting to Know Classics’, as a way to stretch and challenge our students to reading more difficult literature and also as a way to expose them to book titles they may have never heard of before.

Here are a few examples of what happened during the week…

Students took part in many different competitions during tutor time, this included a ‘guess the blub’ game where they were given a blurb of a classic book and had to guess the title of the book. Another great way to expose students to classics through a game. Here is an example that perhaps you can guess too.

When the spoilt and bad-tempered Mary is orphaned at the age of ten, she is sent from India to live with her hunchback uncle on the Yorkshire Moors. At first, she is utterly miserable, but gradually the friendship of her maid and the house she has moved to begin to change her.

Unscrambling anagrams that revealed the classic of a classic book….
het bobhit

Also during tutor time, students played charades, choosing from a list of well-known book titles. It was great to see everyone get involved and surprise themselves with knowing more book titles than they originally thought.
In addition to this, throughout the whole week, students took part in ‘Drop Everything and Read', where for the last 10 minutes of their P5 lesson, students stopped what they were doing, to read.  It was decided that everyone would read the same extract of the classic ‘Things Fall Apart' by Chinua Achebe. As it was a challenging text to read, we asked the teachers to echo read with the students, which meant that the teacher read a few sentences first, and asked a student to read it back to them, echoing their expression. This is also a great method to utilise when reading at home with your child.

We also celebrated the winners of our Accelerated Reader competition. To take part in the competition, students were allowed to be in teams of 4, and the team who gained the most Accelerated Reader points won a film and popcorn afternoon. We had over 20 group entries so competition was extremely tight!  The winners chose to watch The Lion King and enjoyed their afternoon (and the popcorn) greatly. 

Lealands also hosted a book swap, whereby students could bring in unwanted books from home to swap with another student. This is a great opportunity, to not only have new reading material, but to build on community spirit and encourage students to discuss books with one another.

Those students who were lucky enough to have a lesson in the LRC on Thursday, took part in an ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' activities. Alongside silent reading and checking their reading log, students were called up, one by one, to take part in a challenge. This could include a croquet challenge that involved hitting a ball through a book maze, being blindfolded and pinning the grin on the Cheshire Cat, throwing a ball into one of the Mad Hatter’s tea cups or guessing the flavours of the “Drink Me” potions. The students really enjoyed themselves as they saw an extract of a book come to life.

On Friday, we invited the Year 7s and 8s to come dressed up as a book character. Thank you to all who participated and did not come in casual clothing. Although not all groups were able to come dressed up, they were able to take part in a scavenger hunt, where they had to find which members of staff were dressed up as certain book characters. It was a brilliant way to end the week.