Compass International School Doha

World Book Week 1st-5th March 2015

The English Department is devoting this week to work related to reading in every shape or form, because we believe reading is important.

In the classroom students will be creating book trailers, writing a letter to their favourite author, designing book marks, perform a scene from their favourite books, undertaking Twitter style book reviews, create alternative book covers, reading to Primary students, creating new short stories for Primary students, designing and creating Reading is FUNdamental

posters, dust-jackets with blurbs, bookmarks with Shakespearian characters, analysing motivation in characters. In addition: VISIT AND PRESENTATION: On the 5th March, Patrick Hulbert, editor of Time Out Doha magazine will be visiting our Year 11 and 12 students to talk about publishing in general, but also with Year 12 he will be looking at the Ethics of publishing and the impact of the written word on readers as part of the International Baccalaureate English and Theory of Knowledge courses.

  There  are  perhaps  no  days  of  our  childhood  we  lived  so  fully  as  those  we  spent  with  a  favorite  book.    

– Marcel  Proust    

  Any  book  that  helps  a  child  to  form  a  habit  of  reading,  to  make  reading  one  of  his  deep  and  continuing  needs,  is  good  for  him.  

– Maya  Angelou    

READING TO PRIMARY STUDENTS: Secondary students will be reading stories to Primary students at various times during the week. PRIMARY CUSTOM-MADE STORIES: A group of Secondary students will be carrying out a survey with Primary students to see what type of stories they enjoy, creating tailor-made stories to read to the students and then donating copies to the Primary school. COMPETITION: can you guess which teacher has recommended a particular book? Watch out for book covers around the school and a list of staff. You can ask staff members questions to try and guess which book they have recommended, but they can’t say yes or no. You need to be ingenious with your questions for example does the hero have green eyes and the villain have red eyes? Easy – Harry Potter – but which one? COSTUME COMPETITION: Thursday 5th March will be an opportunity for students and staff to dress up as their favourite book character. Prizes for the best dressed character! Can you do better than this?

READATHON: In addition to our ‘Book in a Bag’ campaign, we really want students to read and here is an opportunity to have fun with reading AND to gain points for your house. The Readathon begins on Thursday 26th February ( although we understand you may be exhausted after Sports Day, but perhaps you can squeeze in 30

minutes!) All you have to do is READ a book in English and ask you parents to sign a slip to say you have read for a particular amount of time. This is a trust exercise and we hope parents and students will respect this. The slips are attached and should be returned each day to your English teacher. The minutes will be totalled and there will be house points awarded to each house for the number of hours read.

TO PARENTS – WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO GET INVOLVED. If you would like to read an extract from your favourite story or talk about what reading means to you, to any group of students, we would be delighted for you to come in to school. Please indicate on the slip attached to the Readathon time slips if you are available, which age group you would like to speak to and a time that would be convenient. Please be aware that we

cannot disrupt the timetable, but we can discuss possible groups when you express your willingness to come in.  

 

 

 

TO TEACHERS: If you are free at any point during Book Week and would like to share your favourite book, reading experience, read a favourite poem to a particular year group please let the English Department know. We Know there are lot of avid readers on the staff and would love to share your experiences – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour with activities – we are very happy to accommodate anything you can offer. We want to get the message of ‘Reading is Fun’ into the open. NORD ANGLIA SHORT STORY COMPETITION; ‘AN UNFORGETTABLE PLACE’. The deadline for entries is March 1st. The top 5 descriptions from KS3 and KS4 will be sent to represent Compass. In addition we will have an internal winner from each year group.

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ: at some point during the week (a surprise!) everyone on site will be asked to ‘Drop everything and read!’ Which means just that! Whatever you are doing, whether you are a student, teacher, security guard, secretary, maintenance technician, you should stop, pull out a book and read for 20 minutes. A representative of I-SPY BOOKS will be in school on Sunday 8th March from 7.30 if you would like to purchase books.