Literacy Week 2022 | Out of this World

"The books that you read when you're young live with you forever."

– J. K. Rowling

This year's Literacy Week continued the "Out of This World" theme, and classes explored famous texts linked to Sci-fi and fantasy. The week was full of exciting activities. To start the week, Primary had a huge Kahoot quiz full of literary questions in which each house had to compete for points. Then, the Senior School was treated to a short play delivered by teachers on "procrastination". It was full of laughs and anecdotes. 

Highlights from Literacy Week 2022

Although we cannot have authors on campus, our pupils could still enjoy some engaging sessions with authors who joined us online. 

Our younger pupils enjoyed sessions with Nick Toczek, a poet, author and magician who began writing over fifty years ago. He explained how he gets inspiration for his writing.

Older pupils in Primary were able to interact with Ali Sparkes. She had written over 50 popular books and took them on a journey back in time to when she struggled with reading and writing in school and explained how finding the "right" book in the library helped open her world. She writes for the Oxford University Press, told her story of multiple rejections from publishers before she became successful.

Finally, our Senior pupils met with Chris Bradford, who has written series including Young Samurai and Bodyguard. He explained that his technique for writing involves a lot of personal experience – he even spent time in Japan training as a samurai. He spoke about how he goes on journeys to learn about the characters he wants to write about.

Books by each author are available from our school libraries.

Any successful Literacy week needs a book fair. This year, pupils donated their well-loved books to a book-swap event. Our book swap saw over 200 pupils take part across the whole college, with over 2000 books contributed to the swap. Pupils at Wellington College International Hangzhou had theirs in the atrium. So many excited faces were browsing and choosing books to take home, which was a joy to see. Swapping gently-used books instead of buying new ones also reminds our pupils of the importance of re-use, which is especially poignant when celebrating Earth Day. It was lovely to see pupils perusing the books on display across the week and reading them together. Teachers also took their classes to read in decorated reading areas designed specifically for Literacy Week. It was great to see reading happening on different subjects on varioustopics.

Artworks from pupils
 

Our bookmark design competition was very popular among our pupils, with over 150 entries. Judging the entries was a tough job for the librarians. We considered a few criteria in the judging, including practicalities for having it printed, clarity of image and writing (relative to the pupil's age), and overall design appeal. While we wish we could have chosen them all for printing, we managed to whittle the entries down the some of the very best. The winners will be printed as bookmarks and be available to everyone in our campus libraries. A few of our favourite entries are included above.

Our sponsored reading event encourages our pupils to read more while helping others. 164 pupils across the college have raised RMB 40,489 so far. All money raised will be donated to The Library Project https://www.library-project.org/, which works with the Lingshan Foundation to develop school and classroom libraries in rural schools in China. Many children in these schools do not have ready access to a wide range of children’s novels and nonfiction; some have none. By supporting the installation of new libraries and book corners and the training of staff and parents, our pupils can help disadvantaged children become confident readers.

The week concluded with a whole reading event and a creative costume day. Our pupils had a lot of fun dressing up as their favourite book characters, as did many of the teachers. Again, Primary and Senior pupils combined to share their love of reading. They sat around the school in the garden and relished reading to each other.

Article supported by:
Bronwen Duffield, Head of Librarian
Samuel Miller, Head of Primary English
Samuel Tucker. Head of Senior English