Literacy News

Classroom libraries and Readings

Classroom libraries continue to be a favourite part of all of our learning spaces. Over the past 4 years we have built these libraries up from nothing to approximately 2000 amazing, high quality books. Your children are reading these books during ‘sustained reading’ sessions and the teachers are sharing them with the students as mentor texts to model what a good writer might do. Classrooms have author displays, non-fiction sections and an area of shared and requested books.

Thank you to our fabulous community who have contributed to our collection through donations and to the many AMAZING parents that are contacting them for us. Contacting the books ensure the books will last a lot longer meaning they will entertain so many of our SKiPPS student community.

We are very lucky to have the support of some bookshops that have a vested interest in supporting our classroom library project by allowing us to purchase them at a discounted price. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Katy and the team at The Leaf Bookstore in Ashburton and the whole team at Readings, St Kilda.

Next time you shop at Readings, please mention that you are a part of the SKiPPS community. With each purchase, Readings contribute a percentage of the cost for the school to spend on more books.

Thanks again to our school community, we have been notified that there is a sum of money to be spent at Readings St Kilda. I am thrilled to share that 3/4G are going to visit the store this week and hear the store manager and buyer, Kim Grushow, speak. Kim is going to talk about the different parts within the Childrens’ section, and show them a range of great new books that have arrived. She will also share information about the publishing process and her job in choosing all the children's books that they stock.

Perhaps most excitingly, each of those students are going to select a new book for their classroom library.

As we accrue more funds, we will send other classes to do the same thing. Stay tuned for some student recounts on the trip to Readings and some amazing SKiPPS book reviews!

Pen Pals

I was so thrilled that many of our fabulous students chose to be a part of the Pen Pal initiative and write letters to people residing in the Sacred Heart Community. 

An enormous thank you to Kara Barbuto who has been the liaison person between SKiPPS and SHC and personally delivered the letters. I have shared some of the letters below. You may notice that they are addressed to ‘penpal’ or left blank. 

That is a request from Tammy at Sacred Heart as she felt her members might tap in and out of being able to participate. Tammy will coordinate at her end to make sure the letters are delivered to the right people. It may be that the students write to various residents throughout the year. If you would like your child/children to participate in the next delivery, please let me know as we can be flexible with numbers each post.