‘You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book’, Dr. Seuss.
It was Book Week here at St Augustine’s Priory last week, and it was an adventure from start to finish. On Monday 20th March pupils were greeted in the Preps’ playground by Captain Hook, Peter Pan, Wendy and Hook’s pirates, who then burst into Junior school classrooms during registration – Hook always hot on Peter Pan’s heels. The fun continued as teachers and staff were given a sticker to wear with a book character on it – the objective was for the girls to spot and write down as many of the characters as they could in order to win vouchers for the Pitshanger book fair.
Priory 6 as the Peter Pan characters
Making great progress in the search for book characters
Tuesday 21st March brought with it some exciting visitors in the shape of Robert Weston, author of award-winning ‘Zorgamazoo’, and Billy Bob Buttons, author of ‘I think I murdered Miss’. In the Scriptorium, Mr Weston ran sessions in which he read excerpts from his books to the Junior school and answered questions the girls had. The room was filled with giggles as Mr Weston adopted his character’s voices, and he said afterwards that he has visited many schools, but that ours is the first one in which it looks an attractive thing to be a teacher. During the afternoon in the Chapel, Billy Bob Buttons ran a writing workshop for the Senior school, and gave much advice on being an author and how to get published. Mona Arshi, poet and former human-rights lawyer also kindly came in to run a poetry workshop for Senior school girls after school; you can read about it here.
Author Robert Weston reading to the Junior school
Our Priory 6 Library Prefect, Mrs Raffray, Mr Salmon & Miss King all appeared as mystery readers
Miss Bhatti, our Librarian, ensured that the theme of Book Week resounded every day – teachers visited classrooms to read stories, there were book fairs, a book quiz and even a Book in a Box competition! The entries were so fantastic that the winners have been displayed in the window of Pitshanger Bookshop – go and have a look!
The week rounded up on Friday 24th March with a whole school dress up day – for a £1 donation staff and pupils could come to school dressed as their favourite character from an adventure or fantasy story. A parade of the Junior school costumes took place in the morning, characters from Lewis Carroll to Roald Dahl to Dr. Seuss books filled the Chapel and Mrs Tippen, Mrs Round, Mrs O’Connell and Miss Barrett joined in as well.
At 10.30 am a bell rang to signal the start of ‘Drop Everything and Read’, and everybody in the school stopped what they were doing, took out a book and read for ten minutes until the start of little break. With all this participation and support this Book Week at St Augustine’s Priory managed to raise over £400 to go towards new books for our libraries!
Drop Everything and Read! From Nursery all the way up to Sixth Formers in the IT Room, the whole school took part!
Categories: Junior Nursery Prep Senior Sixth Form Whole School