Book week 2015 at the GFL continued today with another great guest speaker Jacqui Grantford. Today’s talk was entertaining and engaging for the audience with so much to cram in over a short lunch break with students and staff. One of our participating students had his portrait painted by the artist. Caught on Canvas.
This concludes our guest speakers for 2015.
It’s Book Fortnight in the GFL!
With a whole series of activities and events including competitions and author visits happening in the GFL over these two weeks, today was Speed Book Dating in our Senior Library where staff and students had a fun one minute to ‘sell’ their book to other contestants then rank the book presented to them from ‘doesn’t interest me’ to ‘awesome’. While competition was fierce, a great sales pitch given by English Teacher Ms Jen Yoffie of her favourite book, The Year of the Flood written by Margaret Attwood, was a clear winner!
Pictured with the winning book is Ms Jen Yoffie, Alex (Year 12), Mr Henry Kiss and Robert (Year 11).
Congratulations and thanks to all contestants for an awesome event!
Day 5 lunchtime visit to the GFL was none other than Artist/Illustrator of the Deltora Quest series Marc McBride. Very entertaining and a great way to end the week.
Book week 2015 at the GFL Library is here! Day 2 of week 1 and the library has had two guest illustrators – Kevin Burgmeestre and Serena Geddes. Great way to finish on day 2 with Hakuna Matata from The Lion King.
One of the most exciting events we ran during our 2014 Book Week Celebrations this year was the Read Around the World event held over a lunchtime in the GFL.
Working on the philosophy that highlighting literary pursuits at Mentone Grammar should not only be confined to English, we invited senior students of French, German, Japanese and Chinese to the GFL to share the joy of the languages they are studying with the wider community of Greenways and Frogmore students.
The GFL was a sight to be seen over lunchtime on August 14th, as these students set up stations featuring books, music, displays and most importantly food that related to their language. With a cacophony of music in four different languages at the same time, the Gregory Fish Library was transformed from a quiet library space to the kind of sight normally seen at an Expo! In amongst the food and music, it was a delight to see many students wandering around to the different language stations to ‘catch a glimpse’ of the different languages taught at Mentone Grammar. Most thrilling of all was seeing students read to each other! A group of students pulled up some floor space and enjoyed a reading in French by a proficient French student. One of our Chinese students who is learning German, entertained another group of listeners. Speakers of Japanese, German, French and even one of our students who comes from Singapore, as well as many of our ‘just English speakers’ were mesmerized by an ongoing talk given by Bihai (Luke) Sun about the construction of written Chinese.
While all student participants must be congratulated for their efforts in supporting this event, special thanks must go to the LOTE Faculty for their input. Most especially though, we extend our thanks to Bihai (Luke) Sun for the incredible effort he put into preparing food, music, books and his presentation about the Chinese language.
The 2014 Book Week Celebrations in the Gregory Fish Library involved a large number of different events and activities in which Greenways & Frogmore students participated. A visit by Marc McBride was a highlight!
As the illustrator of the very successful Deltora Quest series, Marc McBride visited us equipped with a folio of his paintings and illustrations of dinosaurs which feature in this series of books. The 25 students who attended this session were mesmerized listening to Marc’s enthusiastic and incredibly inspiring presentation while he created, on the spot, an airbrush painting of a dinosaur. Not content with just talking, Marc encouraged the students to put pen to paper and create their own drawings of dinosaurs! Having run out of time for more, we have resolved to explore the possibility of having Marc return again to run a longer workshop with the students.
Meantime, we are the proud owners of a dinosaur painting which will take pride of place on our walls once we frame it!
During the last two weeks we have run an activity with our Year 9 and 10 English classes where the students get together in pairs to read each of the books in either the Early Childhood and Picture Book of the Year categories.
Here are some of their responses to the books:
The book I liked best was Kissed By The Moon. I liked it because it had very interesting illustrations and the reflected the words on the page to a good standard. A nice read all ’round. A peaceful story with a happy ending. I like happy endings.
The book I liked best was King Pig. I liked it because it was about greediness and that will always be a huge problem.
The book I liked best was Granny Grommet and Me. I liked it because it had great illustrations and a fun storyline with descriptive words.
The book I liked best was The Swap. I liked it because it made sense and it wasn’t repetitive. The crocodiles were funny.
The book I liked best was Rules of Summer. I liked it because it had very nice and detailed illustrations to impart the story, and with enough text to explain the entire story.
The book I liked best was Banjo and Ruby Red. I liked it because it led me through a series of emotions and left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside.
The book I liked best was The Treasure Box. I liked it because it showed that no matter what you do or don’t have you can be happy with it, and love it and what it means to you.
The book I liked best was Silver Buttons. I liked it because the whole book is set within a time space of one minute, however you don’t realise this until the end, making the child’s first step seem insignificant.
The book I liked best was Parachute. I liked it because it demonstrated the change in grown yup. When he was young everything was exaggerated, until he grew older and then he towered over the elephant.
The book I liked best was Baby Bedtime. I liked it because it was really cute and it had good colours and storyline, The words were interesting and it had a lot of meaning in it.
The book I liked best was I’m a Dirty Dinosaur. I liked it because it flowed really well, it was fun to read and the illustrations were really unique.
The book I liked best was The Windy Farm. I liked it because it is about hardships and forgiveness, and the book’s ending is enjoyable.
The students had three minutes to read each book, discuss it and then score it out of 10. Then, once six books had been read, the students had to pick their favourite title and write down why. We used an idea from the Ipswich Teacher-Librarian network Book Week activity book, and the booklets were designed by our Junior Teacher-Librarian, Mrs Ross.
The winner of the Early Childhood Category was Banjo and Ruby Red, with The Snap and Granny Grommet and Me as Honour books
The winner of the Picture Book Category was Rules of Summer, with The Windy Farm, King Pig, and The Treasure Box as Honour books.
This activity was heaps of fun for the students and teachers, and we recommend it to teachers to use with all age groups.
There’s nothing better than sharing a love of reading and when that sharing happens right in the middle of our senior school library, excitement and passion tends to get a bit contagious!
Ten teachers battled it out during our 2014 Book Week Celebrations in our first ever Speed Book Dating event. Teachers had to convince – in just one minute – why other teachers should borrow their book. Once the teachers discovered how short a minute really is, it was awesome to witness the passionate presentation of some very convincing reasons!!
Congratulations to Mr Stockdale for his win in convincing a majority of competitors that they must read his chosen book: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. Thanks to all teachers who participated in this lunchtime event.
While some of the questions were dead easy – ‘Who wrote the Fault in our Stars?’ you had to be a seasoned trivia contestant to know the answer to some harder questions such as ‘How much of Australia is classified as desert?’
With six enthusiastic teams battling it, including one team which was defending its two year winning title, it was a close finish! The winning team though looks suitably pleased. They each received a movie voucher!
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