March 8th 2024
Activities in the Prep School
Author visits
Three amazing authors visited at the beginning of the week! Tim Collins challenged Years 3 to 5 with tricky puzzles and conundrums from his series, Sherlock Bones. Year 6 to 8 were able to use the thriller writing tips given by Kathryn Foxfield on Tuesday, and Years 1 and 2 would have kept Professor Ben Garrod all day to answer all of their animal mystery questions, had they been given the chance!
The Big Read
The ever-popular Big Read took place in the theatre on Wednesday, with the boys from Years 3 to 8 having the opportunity to read together in the theatre whilst relaxing on beanbags, teddy bears, sleeping bags, cushions and duvets! It was lovely for the staff to be able to enjoy spending some time quietly reading with the boys too.
Escape Room
All classes took on the Library Escape Room, trying to find the stolen trophy, hidden by ‘new’ teacher, Mr Rious. Padlocked clues, hidden messages and ciphers on the wall, the boys found them all! Mrs Manning even managed to get some library skills practice in too.
World Book Day Assembly
As well as having a chance to see everyone’s costumes, the annual World Book Day Assembly once again celebrated all of the fantastic literary activities that take place within school. Assembly started with Sam A singing ‘Pure Imagination’ from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' before members of Year 7 and 8 performed a re-enactment of The Woman in White whilst telling us about the history of mystery in literature. Joss B and Oliver L from Year 6 and Jacob A and Teddy C from Year 7 then performed their winning presentations from the recent Bradfield Demosthenes. The winners of the class poems were announced with 4S taking the Junior prize for their entry and 6S winning the trophy for the seniors. We celebrated the Word Millionaires (and multi-millionaires) and Reading Stars and our Assembly closed with the Extreme Reading video. It was a great way to kick off the day.
World Book Day Workshops
Our theme for World Book Day this year was ‘Mystery’ and the morning was split into two halves - the first was a house writing competition and the second was ‘mystery readers.’
During the writing task, each House was given four things to build their stories around: a place, an item, an incident and a ‘red herring’. Each House then split into mixed Year groups to write their story, design the book’s cover and write the blurb for the back. Mrs Manning will award the winner next week - although she seems to be either a genius detective or master criminal in the boys’ eyes, judging by some of the entries!
After break, everyone had the chance to visit two classrooms to hear ‘mystery readers’ reading an extract from a book. The only thing pupils knew was the name of the book and so it gave them the opportunity to hear from staff who may not usually teach them and also listen to stories that they might not usually pick. It was a great way to introduce new books and we expect the Library to be busy over the remaining few weeks of term.
