National Simultaneous Storytime

Last Wednesday, the whole school participated in National Simultaneous Storytime. Celebrating it's 25th year, National Simultaneous Storytime aims to promote the value and fun of reading and literacy. At 12pm, classes gathered together with their Social Squad buddy class to join with over 2 million other children, schools and families to read "The Truck Cat".

Introduced this year by Sally Rippin, author of the Billy. B. Brown series, students listened to "The Truck Cat's" author Deborah Frenkel talk about how the inspiration for the story came from a stray cat that found it's way to her house. Deborah then read her story to a captive audience. Afterwards, Danny Snell shared how his illustrations usually start with a shape. Some clever teachers were able to pause the Storytime to allow students to do a directed drawing with Danny of a cat just like the one from the story.

After the story, students enjoyed spending time with their Social Squad buddies to complete a colouring sheet or a Book Review about "The Truck Cat". Teachers were very impressed at how focused students were on listening during the Storytime, especially when Sally shared that inspiration for writing comes from imagination, experience, or a combination of both. Hopefully students will use what they learned from Storytime in their own writing. We can't wait to see what the book is for 2026!