18 Nov 2019

Lakeside connects through book week

By Elaine Fong, Primary Teacher Librarian, Lakeside
Photograph by CIS Communications

Lakeside celebrated CIS’s love of literacy with the ever-popular Book Week from 30 September to 4 October. This year’s theme was “Stories Connect” so there were plenty of exciting library activities, author visits and a book fair - all to give the CIS community an opportunity to “connect through stories”.

Here are the highlights of the week:

CIS READS posters To “connect” adult bookworms to CIS students, the library roped in various teachers, administrators and staff members from the maintenance, security and canteen teams to pose with their favourite books. The result? A series of colourful posters to get our students curious and that gave them inspiration for their next read.

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Admin DEAR time Primary students from grade 1 typically have DEAR sessions (Drop Everything and Read) every day. To give Book Week 2019 a unique twist, school administrators such as Mr Pete Corcoran (Head of school), Ms Angela Hollington (primary principal), Ms Tonia Whyte Potter-Mal (primary vice principal, nursery to grade 2) and Ms Colleen Drisner (Head of student support and wellbeing) were invited to read funny and inspiring stories to students. Ms Celeste Krochak (primary vice principal, grade 3 to 6) even entertained students with her own song “Book Love”.

You could tell that students enjoyed these sessions enormously as there were plenty of laughter!

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6 Word Story The “Stories Connect” theme was also highlighted in library classes. Students were given an A4 picture as a provocation to create a 6-word story in pairs and in small groups in less than 20 minutes. They proved to be very creative with this word limitation and time constraints!

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Author visits Book Week 2019 wouldn’t be complete without author visits. Thanks to Ms Denise Tan from Closetful of Books and Ms Marjan Slaats, our primary teacher librarian, we had an array of authors to engage our students from grades 1 to 6.

Colin Goh - writer, filmmaker, cartoonist, and illustrator Grades 5 and 6 students heard from Mr Colin Goh on how he created the characters and stories for his graphic novel, “Dim Sum Warriors”. The SK and JK students, on the other hand, had a fun time drawing fabulous food characters based on Colin’s Little Dim Sum Warriors series.

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Pippa Chorley - author Grades 1 and 2 met Ms Pippa Chorley, the author of Counting Sheep. She did a great talk about Shep the little sheep who couldn’t jump the fence, experiments, planning and execution as well as writing a rhyming story.

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Sim Ee Waun - author Students from grades 3 and 4 were treated to Ms Sim Ee Waun’s immersive session of stories that took place in Singapore during World War 2. An author who co-wrote the book The House on Silat Road with her mother, her book is one of the Red Dot Book Award nominees this year.

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Mystery Readers Primary and secondary teachers as well as the Cat in the Hat signed up to be Mystery Readers to connect with primary students as storytellers. Can you recognise any of the Mystery Readers in these photos?

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Secondary Student Storytellers Secondary students also joined the literary fun by connecting with the primary library classes through storytelling. Looks like everyone had a fantastic time!

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Book Bistro Students from grades 3 to 6 were invited to “taste” a book at our Book Bistro in the secondary library. Books were wrapped in a napkin and placed on “plates”. Students then had to unwrap the each book, read them silently for a few minutes before giving a review or recommendation. If they liked what they had “tasted”, then they could borrow it. The “plate” would then be “replenished” with another book for the next “customer”. Sounds like a “tasty” adventure, right?

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Book Character Day Book Character Day is always a much anticipated event by the primary students. They displayed such enthusiasm, creative flair and ingenuity with their costumes that we are utterly impressed. Well done, students!

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Book Fair Book Week 2019 is a celebration of literacy and the book fair continued that love of reading at home. Ms Denise Tan from Closetful of Books visited the Lakeside campus to set up shop during the primary parent teacher conferences in our primary library. The buzz of books was definitely in the library air.

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Thank you to all teachers, parents, students and staff who supported and participated. Let’s do this again next year!

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