Book Week

A couple of weeks ago has seen our book week 2012.

Throughout Book Week, BISS has been celebrating the theme “One World Many Stories”, to encourage students to read, discover new authors and develop their writing skills. The school was a buzz of activity with parents and students visiting the book fair, book authors and storytellers mesmerizing us, the fantastic dress-up day, and a hugely successful “living library”.

BISS hosted a “Book Fair” with loads of great books. The Book Fair was located at the cafeteria and students parents and teachers had the opportunity to select and buy moderately priced books to take home.

As part of the Book Week program, BISS invited Dr. Liang Hong, author of “China as in Liang Village” who carried out a writer’s workshop for our Secondary School Students.

British author Emily Gravett author and illustrator of Spells, The Odd Egg, Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears, Monkey and Me and Meerkat Mail came to speak to Grade 4 and 5 about the process as to how she develops her work. Emily Gravett had our students with activities based around her series of playful, rhyming books. From Action rhymes, creating creatures to storyboarding a story, all the students in Grade 4 and 5 enjoyed 90 minutes of fun filled action with Ms. Gravett.

A diplomat, an actress, an Alzheimer’s disease specialist, an athlete, a UN Peacemaker, an artist, a holocaust survivor… One of the week’s highlights was the living library, a mobile library set up as a space for dialogue and interaction.

At the “Living Library” books are people, and they can be borrowed for 30 minutes, creating a save environment for dialog and allowing “the reader” to engage in a personal conversation with their chosen ‘books’. Students visiting the living library were given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background.

Coming along with our book week theme, “One World Many Stories”, elementary students and teachers took part in a dress-up day where each grade level represented a literary genre. This presented a good opportunity for each class to study its assigned genre and explore some book characters.

 

The week of activities finished off with a fantastic Book Week assembly where Grade 5 students Irene, Manoli, Annie, Dhaanyia, and 3^rd graders Sajid and Hanson used a TV NEWS format video to broadcast the book week activities to our community.

The event concluded with Ms. O’Dwyer choir enthralling the audience with their outstanding choral performance of the Book Week theme song “One World Many Stories”.

We feel that Book Week 2012 was a great success and that comes down to all the effort that students and staff went to. Thank you all very much.

We are already looking forward to the next one!

Congratulations to everyone involved in the International Book Week, an absolutely positive experience in every way.

Last November has seen a very successful book week in school. The school was a buzz of activity with parents and students reading to different classes, plays and storytellers mesmerizing us, the fantastic Fancy dress day, and a hugely successful Book Fair. Thank you to all the parent volunteers who came in to read or share books with our pupils. It has been great also to see so many parents coming into school to buy books for themselves as well as their children.

This year international book week saw some familiar guests return along with some new additions, to the traditional CIS celebration.

The EMC turned into a small Café Theatre, the last refuge for unknown playwrights and actors, and venue for a young audience demanding for new talent. Our Café Theatre stage pulsed with excitement as the Grade 10 band played their original compositions for a full house of over 100 or when our Book Lovers club members shared their insights into the stories and characters in the books they are reading.

As part of our celebrations during Book Week, elementary students and teachers took part in a dress-up day, disguised as their favorite book character and brought in the book to share.

One of the week’s highlights was the living library, a mobile library set up as a space for dialogue and interaction. Students visiting the living library were given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background. This activity enabled our students to break stereotypes by challenging the most common prejudices in a positive and educational manner.

 

For the second time, the CIS classrooms were visited by a contingent of high school students from Binaliw, a mountain barangay whose community members count among the world’s poorest. CIS students have been working with Binaliw high school students for the past three years in a kind of two-way exposure plus reading program for Binaliw 2nd graders. The culminating activity of this semester was Book Week, when the team brought a morning of storytelling to 1st grade classes of Ms. Brockbank.

 

Old friends complimented new ones. We were very lucky to have Dr. Basa, a well-known children’s book author, visit us this week to help with our International Book Week celebrations. Dr. Basa had our grade 5 class with activities based around her series of playful, rhyming books. From Action rhymes, creating creatures to storyboarding a story, all the students in Grade 5 enjoyed 60 minutes of fun filled action with Dr. Basa.

 

The week of activities finished off with a fantastic Readers’ Theater show, were the Book Week Committee teachers performed an old Native American tale, “How Prairie became Ocean”, for our students and staff.

 

We feel that International Book Week 2010 was a great success and that comes down to all the effort that students, Book Week committee members, and staff went to. Thank you all very much.

We are already looking forward to the next one!

Congratulations to everyone involved in the Book Week, an absolutely positive experience in every way. The school was a buzz of activity with teachers reading to different classes, plays and storytellers mesmerizing us, the fantastic Fancy dress day and a hugely successful Book Fair.

This year international book week saw some familiar guests return along with some new additions, or better said, “editions” to the traditional CIS celebration. The EMC once again turned into an interactive museum piece fused with a workshop seminar site. The forbidden library re-opened its vaults, once again reminding us of the function of a school and its library as an inquirer and conscience of a society. Book Week trivia piqued the memories of students and “what’s your favorite book” asked EMC users to use their intuition to match colleagues’ pictures with their favorite books. As part of our celebrations during Book Week, elementary students and teachers took part in a dress-up day, disguised as their favorite book character and brought in the book to share.

One of the week’s highlights was a first time visit to CIS classrooms by a contingent of high school students from Binaliw, a mountain barangay whose community members count among the world’s poorest. CIS students have been working with Binaliw high school students for the past two years in a kind of two-way exposure plus reading program for Binaliw 2nd graders. The culminating activity of this semester was Book Week, when the team brought a morning of storytelling to 1st grade classes of Ms. Brockbank and Ms. Amargo. The little ones were treated to Filipino folktales told by our multinational cast in English, Cebuano, Japanese, Tagalog and Korean. The enchanting 1st graders returned the favor by sharing some of their stories with the newly charmed high schoolers.

Old friends complimented new ones, as Dr. Josol brought her former teacher back from Cebu Normal University for her 2nd Annual Research Congress. The 10th grade English class was privileged to have their research papers reviewed by scholar and professor, Dr. Joseph Galleon. Certainly the 10th graders benefited from the feedback of a “real live” professor who gave them a glimpse of what to expect in college.

I feel that book week 2009 was a great success and that comes down to all the effort that students and staff went to. Thank you all very much.