Back in person after two years, we celebrated Book Week this year on campus from 25th to 29th April 2022 with lots of enthusiasm and fervour. The theme this year was ‘You are a Reader!’.
The week commenced with the popular book character parade. On Monday 25th, the early years, PYP learners and teachers came dressed up as their favorite book characters. We met on the basketball court to show off our costumes and introduce our book character and book. It was a great start to the week!
On Tuesday, the P3 learners had an opportunity to meet a child prodigy, Chryseis Knight, author of “The Great Big Lion”, a story of two children and a lion. The book gives a beautiful message of inclusion, wildlife conservation and friendship. She has been declared as the world’s youngest author bythe international publishing company, Penguin Random House. Chryseis read “The Great Big Lion” and spent a lot of time answering questions from the P3 learners. It was amazing to see the confidence, enthusiasm, and zeal with which Chryseis interacted with our learners. She then asked the P3 learners to identify five things that they see around them and start writing a story. She gave a lot of inspirational ideas and tips on writing stories. For the Homeroom activity, the learners redesigned a cover of a book that they read in class utilizing their creative thinking skills. The book covers displayed outside the classroom gave a glimpse of different perspectives.
On Wednesday, 27th April, the P1 and P2 learners interacted with author and illustrator, Ashok Rajagopalan. He has authored many books, but he is well known for his Gajapati Kulapati series. Small noses catch a small cold and big ones catch a big cold – with this logic Ashok wove his humorous story of Gajapati Kulapati. He started his session by reading ‘Gajapati Kulapati’. We all did some ‘AAACHOOO’s together to have some fun. Being an Illustrator, he showed us a simple trick to draw an elephant using the alphabet. Our P1 and 2 learners were prepared with interesting questions to find out more from our visiting author. In Homeroom, learners wrote the title and author of the book they are currently reading. This was then put together to create a display of ‘What students are reading?’ We also had a display of ‘What teachers are reading?” that allowed teachers to showcase what they are reading as we are a community of readers.
On Thursday, our P4 learners had an opportunity to listen to Olivier Lafont, author of the children’s fantasy novel, “Oop and Lila: lost in Scarabean Sea”. It is a story of two siblings who embark upon an adventure surrounded by pirates and wish-making candies. Olivier told the learners how the Scarabean Sea evolved from the Arabian Sea and Caribbean Sea, both having their own incredible pirating history. Olivier’s passion and knowledge about pirates was evident as he spoke about his inspiration behind this story. He conducted a small fantasy writing activity with the learners.
Friday was a day of fun and mystery as each homeroom enjoyed the ‘Mystery book game.’ Each class received books that were wrapped, and the learners played ‘pass the parcel’ as they asked interesting questions to prompt and reveal the title of the mystery book. Once opened, the book will be kept in the classroom as part of the class library. P5 learners also met author Mini Srinivasan, who talked about her three books – ‘Just a train ride away’, ‘Worms in my Family’ and ‘The Boy with 2 grandfathers’. She shared her thoughts behind each story. Mini also shared that she likes to write stories that are funny, but that give an important message or deal with an important topic. She shared a lot of interesting tips on writing skills but the one that was the highlight was – “If you want to be a writer, read a lot.”
In line with our theme, ‘You are a Reader!’, the learners enjoyed their DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time throughout the week. The homeroom teams invited different members of our school community to read to our learners during this week. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Aakash, Ms. Audrey, Ms. Bhagyashree, Ms. Carla, Ms. Chaitrali, Ms. Edna, Mr. Erick, Ms. Maya, Ms. Namrata, Mr. Patrick, Ms. Poonam, Mr. Tim, and Ms. Vidya.
All in all, it was a fun-filled week!
Primary Library Team
