This week, Fyling Hall marked the annual “National Book Day” with a variety of activities; all of which were designed to draw attention to how fun and enjoyable reading should, and could be. The week started with a special whole school assembly that celebrated reading and books. During the previous week, all form groups across the school had taken part in a quiz where they were challenged to match up a teacher’s name to a book that for one reason or another, was memorable. In this week’s whole school assembly, each member of staff revealed their choice, with an explanation of why the book had left such an impression.
Our headmaster, Mr Allen, started off proceedings by revealing that Roald Dahl’s “Danny, the Champion of the World” was a book that he had very fond memories of as a child. A varied selection of books were spoken about by a variety of teachers: from Mr Edge’s Geordie accented explanation of why he enjoyed reading the “Geordie Bible” to Mr Coates’ reasons for why the novel “Touching the Void” had inspired him so much. Once each of the teachers had divulged and then spoken about their book choices, I announced that Miss Walker’s year 7 form had matched the most book titles to the correct teachers, and they received a much anticipated chocolate prize.
The assembly then moved onto the main event: Fyling Hall’s “Reading Selfie” competition. The competition brief was for the pupils to take an interesting (but safe!) photograph of themselves reading. The 6 minute video displayed all of the wonderful photographs that were sent as competition entries (nearly 60 in total), and they certainly demonstrated lots of different but creative approaches. Some were witty, others clever but all were fun – exactly what reading should be. It was a difficult decision, but the chosen winners were Dylan Greenwood (Junior School), Lucas Ayckbourn (years 7-9) and Michael O’Sullivan (years 10-13).
Take a look at the photos by clicking on this link: http://youtu.be/Y9kxIa40dPw
To reinforce the idea that reading is an important part of everyone’s learning, the first period of the day was planned as a dedicated reading lesson across the whole school. Unusually for a Monday morning, you could have heard a pin drop for nearly 40 minutes!
During Wednesday’s assembly, year 9 presented another reading assembly to the school, this time a selection of pupils read out passages from some of their favourite books.
Judging by the number of requests for specific books titles that have been made to the school librarian this week, a large number of pupils were inspired to pick up a book and read, and long may this trend continue!
Mrs Park
Dylan Greenwood
Lucas Ayckbourn
Michael O’Sullivan