At MIS, we value, enjoy, nurture and celebrate our love of books and reading. Book week is one the most awaited celebrations of the school year. This year we celebrated our International Book Week virtually from 26th to 30th April 2021, the theme was ‘Reading is my Superpower: A celebration of Books, Reading and Mindfulness’.
This year we had a range of activities planned for our learners. The Information Literacy engagement for the book week offered all learners a special Choice Board. Within the choice board, there was a range of activities designed around the theme and it gave leaners an opportunity to choose the activity they wanted to do. Each day of the week we had check-in questions posted for the students and teachers alike, around books and reading. For example, “What’s your favorite food/drink/snack that you like to have besides you while reading?” It was interesting to read everyone’s point of views.
On Tuesday, April 27th, the Early Years learners had a session with the author Shelly Anand. Shelly introduced her debut book, ‘Laxmi’s Mooch’ to our learners. This is a wonderful story of a girl Laxmi, who comes to term with her face and body hair. It is a celebration of our bodies and our body hair, in which ever way they grow. The EY learners expressed that they enjoyed listening to the story and had lots of interesting questions for Ms. Shelly. Some questions and comments were –
Abhay – Who is Laxmi?
Aahaana – Do we all have a Mooch?
Aurelia – My cat has furry and has a lot of hair.
Dressing up as a book character is a very popular event that most primary learners enjoy. Celebrating our Book Week virtually did not dampen our enthusiasm. On Wednesday, our learners, parents and teachers all dressed up as book characters and shared their costumes with each other during their Homeroom Google Meets.
P1 and 2 students were excited to meet an Author-Illustrator duo Ms. Nidhi Kamra and Ms. Diane Brown. Ms. Nidhi introduced Alliteration through a tongue twister activity. She mentioned that authors use alliteration to make their book fun and interesting. Alliteration is when we use a series of words that start with the same letter, for example “the reverting, read” or “bright, bouncing, baby bubbles”.
The alliteration Ms. Nidhi shared was –
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Then where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
She then read her book ‘Ten Sheep to Sleep’, a picture book with a math twist and discussed the beginning, middle and end of the story with our learners. She also read her book “Simon’s Skin”; Ms. Diane Brown, the illustrator of ‘Simon’s Skin’, then interacted with our learners and took our learners through her illustration process.
Here is the process that Diane goes through:
- First, she reads the draft shared by the author.
- then she starts drawing on her story board. (A story board is a plan where the illustrator draws each of the pages in the story.
- When each illustration is finalized, she then illustrates each of them on a larger sheet of paper, that matches the size that the book will be published in.
- This results in a book dummy and now she figures out how to place the sentences and words on each page.
- She then uses watercolors to paint the pictures.
To bring the session to a close, Diane drew Simon “live on our call” with our students so they could see the artist at work!
On Friday, our P3 to P5 learners also had a session with Ms. Nidhi Kamra, about how she writes a picture book. The session began with finding out exactly how she defines a picture book. Ms. Nidhi took us through the beginning, middle and end of a story in detail. She highlighted do’s and don’ts to make a story fun and appealing. She also shared different writing tricks that will hook the readers. One golden rule she shared was ‘Show don’t tell’, use senses, dialogue, action to make it interesting! In the end she shared some interesting tips for writing a picture book such as:
- Read a lot of picture books,
- Practice writing every day,
- Ask for feedback.
She talked about the importance of making our book characters and title interesting. Our P3-5 learners took a lot away from this session and perhaps some of them will write their own books!
It was another fun-filled, exciting book week at MIS!
Primary Library Team
Works Cited
Image Credits:
Simon’s Skin. nidhikamra.weebly.com/. Accessed 3 May 2021.
Laxmi’s Mooch. www.shellyanand.com/. Accessed 4 May 2021.
Ten Sheep to Sleep. nidhikamra.weebly.com/. Accessed 4 May 2021.