Student Voices

Book Week

Book Week originated as an initiative of the CBCA (the Children's Book Council of Australia) and has become a treasured event on our College calendar. This year in the Junior School, Book Week activities comprised a parade, author visit (with award-winning Morris Gleitzman!), an interesting assembly presentation from 6R and many riveting activities in the library. The 2026 Book Week theme was Symphony of Stories, and the parade saw the Junior School student body come together in many weird and wonderful character costumes to embrace the art of literature. We even had a short story competition that had a first-place winner, but if you can complete a literary adventure, then you have already lived out Book Week’s motto.

The Book Week parade was a beneficial event for participants and spectators alike. There was much collaboration between classmates and grades that led to fascinating displays and much enjoyment. Highlights varied from Mrs Beauchamp’s and Mrs Finney's entertaining Year 2 performance of "This Is What You Came For", where the parents and carers were delighted, to the Year 6 minions chasing bananas to "Happy." Even our Pre-Preps took part in the celebration of literature, parading around to the "Macarena", with the Alpacas with Maracas (Señora Carrasco and Señora Mansilla) giving live performances utilising, you guessed it, maracas.

Our favourite part of Book Week was reading with our buddies! The Year 5 and 6 students have Prep and Pre-Prep buddies, and this week we read books together and helped our buddies with their own reading. It was an amazing experience getting to know them and seeing how excited they were to share stories with us. We had lots of fun and can’t wait to see our buddies again!

We were also very lucky to have such a world-renowned author come and speak with us. Mr Gleitzman shared with us his amazing stories and talent, helping us understand the secrets to writing. He outlined the importance of finding things out for yourself. Answering all our questions, he helped us grow as writers and helped hand out the short story awards. We are so thankful to have such a skilled and experienced writer come and meet us, teaching us lessons and skills to improve our overall writing and grow our love of books!

Please refer to the Week 8 Photo Gallery for highlights.

Debating

More than 100 teams started in the Year 10 QDU Inter-School Debating Competition this year, and the Clayfield 10.1 Debating Team finished in the top four, making it to the Semi-Finals!

It has been a long road to this point. Since Year 7 we have consistently attended weekly team meetings and after every inter-school debate we stayed back and received personal feedback from the QDU Adjudicators which we analysed, re-worked and used in future debates. We have grown our skills as individuals and developed new techniques as a team to achieve this historic result. This is the most successful results in the recorded history of Clayfield College’s debating program across all year levels.

We are looking forward to the Year 11 Debating season next year, with the possibility of additional teams and more practice debates. There is also much excitement about the highly anticipated House Debating Competition in Term 4.  We are so proud to continue striving to lift the Clayfield Debating Program to a level of excellence.

Congratulations to ou Clayfield 10.1 Debating Team members (in alphabetical order): Rupert H-S, Thomas H-S, Savaana K, Lilly M, Vera Z.