Library News

Welcome to Week 9! It’s good to be back after my leave and I’m looking forward to seeing students again for more great stories and library lessons. I must give a heartfelt thank you to Mrs Deb Carrigan who took wonderful care of the library and classes in my absence, I’m so grateful for her coming in. It makes taking leave easier knowing that the library is in such capable hands. Thank you also to Mrs Sharon Hollis, the Library Assistant, who supported Deb while she was here.

This Week’s Reads

Kindergarten to Year 2 will enjoy some fun Easter stories and colouring activities this week.

Kindergarteners read ‘The Big Bush Easter Egg Hunt’ by Colin Buchanan and then designed their very own sneaky place to hide Easter eggs. They also hunted for eggs in an ‘egg find’ that proved tricky when it’s hard to count over 30!

Years 1 & 2 are reading another book in Kate & Jol Temple’s Bin Chicken series, ‘Bin Chicken’s Eggcellent Easter’. Students love this book and get a giggle when Bin Chicken steals the Easter Eggs and then has to go on the run from children and the Easter Bunny!

Year 3 to 6 are completing their Term 1 units including an author study of Leigh Hobbs and learning about visual literacy. This week, Years 3 & 4 will be introduced to one of Hobbs’ most famous characters, Old Tom, and then complete a guided illustration lesson by the author himself. 3W made a start on theirs today.

Years 5 & 6 are turning their visual literacy skills from texts to film this week, learning how directors and animators use special techniques when creating their characters and movies. Students watch a short Pixar video and then choose scenes from various movies to analyse.

6T applying their visual literacy knowledge to a film scene analysis

SORA - We’re Super Readers!

Last week, I received some great feedback from the Diocese about how our students are using SORA, the school’s digital library. Several years ago, our Diocese merged their digital library of ebooks and audiobooks with the Australian Catholic Education Network and we now share resources with 15 Dioceses across Australia. At a recent inter-diocesan meeting of SORA coordinators, Holy Trinity ranked 19th among all the schools across 15 Dioceses for borrowing rates. This is a fantastic result, especially when comparing the size of our school to larger metropolitan schools and truly reflects how reading is valued at HTS and encouraged by all staff from Kindergarten to Year 10.

Congratulations must also go to our students who support SORA and love to read their books! In the past 3 months, students have borrowed 1,361 ebooks and audiobooks and read for a total of 324 hours. Wow! I was also interested to see that students continued to read through school holidays in January and that of the top 10 titles borrowed, 6 of those had Taylor Swift on the front cover! She’s not only dominating the music world but the literary one too.

SORA Books of the Week

Last week’s SORA books of the week celebrated World Poetry Day on the 21st of March. SORA can be accessed from any device at home by following the instructions here, however, your child will need their school username and password to log in (this is available from their class teacher).

Book Club - Thank You

I wanted to thank families who were able to support the Term 1 Book Club last week. I appreciate your support as the library receives a credit for each order which we then use to buy more books for students to enjoy. Orders can take up to 2 weeks to arrive at school so I’m hoping they arrive before the long weekend, but if not, they will be here next week.

New Library Furniture

The last of our new library furniture arrived while I was on leave and it was a great surprise to see them yesterday. Students have already enjoyed the new seating nooks and round chair setup.

2024 Students as Writers Competition

Once again, the Armidale Diocese is holding the ‘Students as Writers Competition’ where students can submit a story about a topic and the winners of each category have their story professionally illustrated and published on SORA. This year’s topic is: How do you see the future? Write a story that captures a sense of the world to come and how humans will live in it.

Entries close on Friday, 14th June 2024, and more information can be found by accessing the QR code on the attached poster. Information will also be available in the library.