At St James we are Wild about Reading

All St James children have been registered and will receive a login and password from the class teacher. Children in the junior school are encouraged to listen to their parents read books from the reading listen and have conversations about the text. As the competition progresses, parents are encouraged to help their children read together.

The Victorian Government has carefully curated a long list of rich texts for young readers. Please see the booklist attached for books.

In the coming fortnight each child will receive their own login to our new Library system Oliver (Years 4-6) or Orbit (Prep - 3) This system will have reading lists of books that the children can borrow in their library lessons. A list of the challenge books can also be found hen you login.

Certificates and progress of the challenge will be celebrated in fortnightly assemblies.

Logging in with a Challenge passcode

Your teacher will give you a Challenge username and passcode. You should find this in your child’s diary or magic words book where other passwords are located.

If you lose or forget your Challenge passcode,please ask or email Mrs joplin at ajoplin@stjamesbrighton.catholic.edu.au to generate a new one for you.

Go to the Challenge application.
Select the School/Student button.
Select the VPRC login option.
Enter your username and password.
Select Login.

Viewing your dashboard

The dashboard is your main workspace as you progress through the Challenge.

At the top of the dashboard are gemstone badges. These are grey when you start your Challenge. They change to green as you progress through the Challenge.

Below the badges is a green bar. This shows you how many days are left until the end of the Challenge.

There are also two progress wheels that show:

what your Challenge target is
how many Challenge or Choice books you have finished or had verified.

Your reading list shows the books you have added and finished reading.

As you add more books to your reading list, the application will learn the kinds of books you like to read. It will recommend other books by:

genre
author
series
subject.

Books other students at your school and across Victoria are reading appear on the Trending books list.

The side menu lets you:

see your Profile Details and add an avatar
see all the book reviews you have written
search for books you would like to add to your reading list.

Challenge Rules

The challenge runs all the way to September and is very attainable for all children.

Children need to read:

Prep to Year 2

Number of books: 30
Number of books from the Challenge book list: 20 or more

Year 3 to Year 6

Number of books: 15
Number of books from the Challenge book list: 10 or more

What you can read

Most of the books you read should be from the Challenge book lists. The rest can be any book you choose.

You can read books on the book list for your year level or a level above and they'll count towards your Challenge total. You should check with your teachers or parents if you're not in years 9 or 10 and want to read a book from that list. This list includes titles for mature readers.

You can read a book from a level below your year level if your teacher agrees. You still need to read the number of books for your year level to meet the Challenge.

Let’s get reading!!

Kid’s Lit Quiz Australia

To support our Reading for Pleasure program in Year 6 and generate a buzz about reading, This year our Year 6 students participated in the Kids’ Lit Quiz (KLQ).

In the KLQ heats, students were asked to answer 100 questions on children’s literature divided into ten categories.

From the heats we created a team of amazing readings ready to challenge other schools from across Victoria. The children tried there best! We did not win the quiz however Mr Niarros and I were very proud of the children's effort. They were respectful and courteous at all times and showed great sportsmanship. It was a lovely opportunity to celebrate our passion for reading and I think both children and teachers learned a lot about the competition. I am very proud to have our 4 Lit Quiz Champs represent St James and look forward to entering a team next year.

Our Quiz Lit Champs will be conducting a St James Lit Quiz in Term 3 so get reading so you can join in the fun!

Reading for Pleasure

This week our Year 6s went back to the STAR library for a lovely lesson with Ms Austin and Mr Pearson to explore new authors and rich texts.

Recommendations for Parents

'The albatross is just about the rarest thing in golf - two shots on a par 5. A hole-in-one, anywhere on the course, is just a random event, a fluke. It's not your own doing. But an albatross . . . It's a thing of beauty. One. Two. It must be very deliberate, very thoughtful, one superb shot followed by another. You can say it's got to take a degree of belief. You've got to really want it, and aim for it, and try for it.'

When Primrose makes an unplanned detour into a dilapidated suburban golf course called Whistles, she has no idea that the past will come rushing back at her, bringing every detail of her life into stark focus.

At 36, her marriage is teetering from illness and infidelity. A visit from her commanding brother-in-law looms ominously on the horizon. And by a twist of fate, Peter, the boy she loved twenty years ago, is now living across the street.

Primrose cannot escape the increasing demands to make a choice, between her first love and her marriage, duty and desire, fear and freedom. Slowly, the grounds of Whistles, and a sport she proves to be terrible at, become her meditation and cure.

From a sparkling new Australian voice, The Albatross is a big-hearted, beautifully written and utterly engaging novel about first love, second chances and the most elusive shot in golf.

Praise for The Albatross

'The Albatross is a sinewy, compelling vine of a novel, twining into unanticipated crevices and captivating the reader until the very last page. Brilliant. This is a spectacularly good book; funny, tense, observant, and equipped with a truly memorable heroine.'

Annabel Crabb

'Nina Wan's shining debut has captivated both my mind and heart. It is such an important novel that should be widely read. It has been days since I have finished this book but Primrose Li remains alive to me and I know she will live on in many more readers to come.' Hannah Bent, bestselling author of When Things Are Alive They Hum

'The first thing you want to do when you finish The Albatross is find the nearest rooftop and shout, "Primrose!" It's an understatement to call her the narrator of this smart, beguiling novel. Its warmth and humour are her warmth and humour, as are its disquieting undertones... [This is] is a study in the art of the swerve - into Primrose's marriage, into her past, into brilliant discussions of potential and belonging and the everyday question of being happy, or not. There are secrets beneath all this, and the final mix is that rare book that manages to be both surprising and subtle - a quality that's utterly Primrosian.'

VPLA Unpublished Manuscript Prize judges report.

‘Reading Nina Wan’s debut novel was a true privilege.’

Whistles, a rather pathetic nine-hole golf course somewhere in suburban Melbourne, is dying. It is about to be swallowed up by a developer and for Primrose Li, her newly discovered escape will soon be gone. Primrose doesn’t remember exactly why she ended up taking up golf, although an astute reader will put the pieces together soon enough. She knows she needed a reason to get out of the house, and her elderly, no-nonsense golf partner Harriet keeps her coming back again and again. At home, Primrose finds comfort in cleaning everything, again and again. Her hands, and her mental health, are falling apart.

With a sick husband, a career that has been taken away from her, and a neighbour who has become both best friend and worst enemy at the same time, Primrose can feel life spiralling away from her. The golf course and a weekend away with the neighbours, one of whom also happens to be an ex-boyfriend from her teenage years, might save her. They may also just make things even more complicated, but perhaps confronting the past and taking back control of her days is exactly what Primrose needs.

Reading Nina Wan’s debut novel was a true privilege. To begin with, it was a funny trip down memory lane, as Primrose and I are around the same age and her high school years roughly coincide with my own. (Anyone else remember the sweet pre-mixed bottled drink Sub Zero from the ’90s? I didn’t either until Primrose reminded me.) The wry humour throughout the book becomes the perfect antidote to the devastating undertone of Primrose’s story, as we find out more about why she is the way she is. And while the ending is somewhat ambiguous, it allows the reader to hope. Primrose is strong, she will survive and while she may never achieve an albatross on the golf course, she may yet manage a birdie.

ABOUT our AUTHOR

Nina Wan is mum to Beautful Katie and Erik at St James. She is a former journalist. She was born in Shanghai and moved to Australia as a child.

The inspiration for The Albatross came from an inner-city golf course in Melbourne, where she once found unexpected joys at a time of formidable challenges.

Mrs Mandi Joplin

Teacher Librarian

Learning Diversity