We would like to share how we celebrated Literacy Festival and World book day here at Hundred of Hoo. This is our second year of running the Literacy Festival to celebrate all things literacy and World Book Day.
It takes a full year to organise and prepare for and a lot of staff’s efforts go into the arrangements, we thought it would be nice to share this with yourselves and give you an insight of the week.
We kicked off the week with our scholastics book fair arriving on Monday and I’m pleased to announce we have beat our record from last year by raising £495.51 this year!
We then had our lovely author Ross Welford talk on the Wednesday for the Secondary school and arranged an additional visit for him to our primary school which was yet another huge success for the pupils here. Ross Welford was very engaging for the pupils for both secondary and primary and delivers his presentation with the theme of what could be considered magic and what truly is magical when reading a book. He performed some brilliant mind reading tricks related to his books that astonished us all and we are still wondering how he was able to pull off this performance, leaving the pupils curious and wanting to explore the author’s content. It was a fantastic morning. We ended this author talk on a high note and involved Ross Welford in our 100% Sparx rewards where he gave out copies of his own book to the 8 pupils that were picked to celebrate their success in the 100% Sparx Reader for the current academic year.
We then moved on to our poetry workshops and creative writing workshop. We were lucky to have medway poetry association join us to deliver this workshop. The pupils were given a canvas and given tips and pointers from our experienced poets on how to build and create a variety of poetry. The association shared their own poetry with our pupils and explained what inspired them to create such beautiful work. The pupils came away feeling very Inspired. The canvases will then go on to be displayed in our local Library in Hoo for all to enjoy.
The creative writing workshop was delivered next, by our Head of Neptune Mr Palmer and a previous sixth former who has recently published his own book called “The Golden Eagle” by Volodymyr Dunikovskyi. Volo donated his time to join us here at Hoo to inspire our young pupils into the world of creative writing. The Workshop consisted of a talk from our young budding author explaining what brought him on the path of creative writing and the concept behind his book. We then gave away two of his books to the best pieces of creative writing.
Thursday was another eventful day where we held a careers fair for KS3/KS4/KS5. We were joined by individuals with careers that had literacy embedded within their roles. We greeted Courtney Wilkins from compare and recycle who works with marketing and social media, Erica Snow who is the head of campaign for the charity Heart of Kent Hospice, Fabio Antoncini a project manager for Greystar Developments, Jaye from Rochester Literacy Festival and Belinda Hill from Medway Libraries. The pupils were spoilt for choice with such a variety of roles to choose from and I was so proud of how our students conducted themselves, asking our visitors some really great questions and showing interest in these particular career paths.
Our visitors really focused on the importance of strong literacy and reading skills and how impactful it is within their roles. Running alongside the Careers festival we also had our creative rewards activities such as toilet roll book characters, literacy baubles crafts and the masked teacher quiz that was shared for all the academy to enjoy and take part in.
I’m very proud of our Library steering group that consists of Emma Simone, Margaret Hutchinson, Conor Redmond and Maria Simone and myself to create an event that celebrates and promotes Literacy as a whole. I think the pictures capture the week’s events and the reason why we do this as an academy for all to enjoy.
