Library

Left: Uncovering magical secrets;

Below:

“Expelliarmus!” Boys practising their spell casting, with their invisible wands!

HARRY POTTER BOOK NIGHT 2022

ALL WORDS BY

Mrs Amy Lumley-Wood,

Prep School Librarian

The theme for this year was ‘Magical Journeys’, and boys had the chance to stay after school to make mini broomsticks and marauders maps using secret invisible ink, before listening to Professor McGonagall (aka Mrs Carrington) recount Harry’s trip on the triple decker purple Knight Bus. Science lessons became Potions Class, Hockey was swapped for Quidditch, and boys could fold their own origami monster bookmarks.

Our competition this time was to make a ticket for the Knight Bus The entries were all in all shades of purple, and used lots of creativity and imagination. Jeremy Dunn’s winning entry was amazing, with a mini paper bus that travelled around the outside of the ticket.

Library

WORLD BOOK DAY

For World Book Day this year, we put our normal timetable to one side and had a day of reading related activity with diversity as the main theme. Each Head of Year selected a book for their year group to study. Year 3 chose ‘Sadiq and the Desert Star’, Year 4 ‘The Classroom Cat’, Year 5 ‘Cyborg Cat’, Year 6 ‘Tin Boy’, Year 7 ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ and Year 8 ‘The Breadwinner’.

Throughout the day, each year group was given the opportunity to read extracts from their chosen novel, discuss the characters and settings, and act out some drama inspired by the story.

Each tutor group chose another book and used this as inspiration for their costumes for the day. A lot of hard work went into this and the boys all looked fantastic.

We were delighted that Steve Skidmore, our Patron of Reading, was able to spend the whole day with us in person. He spoke to all the boys in a special assembly – which included some interactive iHero readings. He then spent most of the day with Year 6 boys, who were the very first pupils in the world(!) to get a sneak peek at the Two Steves’ new graphic novels. These retell some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, with inclusion at their heart so every reader can see themselves in the iconic roles. The boys had the chance to do just that, taking on Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene and Macbeth’s three witches.

There were a number of other activities during the day, including Book Lucky Dip, and match the Selfie (of the teacher) to the Shelfie (of their bookshelf). Mr Affleck arranged for everyone to come together in the Erskine May Hall at the end of the day – the first time we had been able to do this for nearly two years. Boys learned a little about the books everyone had been reading, and then had to guess which book each class had chosen to dress up as. Steve was on hand to choose the winning classes. We then learned which bookshelves belonged to which member of staff, with boys sharing how they worked out the correct answers. 3C, 6W, 7EG and 7M got full marks, so they must know the staff very well. The winning classes for each year were as follows: 3L Paddington 4V Gangsta Granny 5RR The Bayeux Tapestry 6L Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 7K The Dictionary 8B The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Steve’s special mention for photo of the day went to 7M’s Jurassic Park the Lost World.

AUTHOR VISITS 2021-22

On Friday 3 December Ross Welford joined us for the day, to talk about his books. Ross introduced boys to his ‘library of imagination’ and explained how he was inspired by his own childhood favourite books, and his love of magic tricks. He described reading as a form of magic: ‘When you open the pages of a book, magic happens’. Some of the boys volunteered to help Ross perform the time travel rope trick – which inspired him to weave travelling through time into his stories. Together we explored what makes a story, essentially some great characters with problems to solve or a quest to embark on. Ross’ advice was “Characters without problems are really, really boring!’

Boys all then worked with Ross to dream up some characters and write a story together. Y3 and Y4 boys decided on Timmy the talking elephant, Jimmy the mouse, Rose the ticket seller and an unnamed woolly mammoth. They dreamt up a missing jewel-encrusted sword, and their quest to find it took them to the pyramids and Las Vegas! Ross’ storytelling and array of character voices made the story all the more enjoyable.