Library News

What is Student Buy-in?

Each week two Reading Room students (Years 7-9) go to Collins Booksellers, Echuca, with a College Library staff member to buy a $20 book the student would like to read.   The selected books are then brought back to class and discussed, before being catalogued as part of the College Library collection with a cover label saying who the book was selected by.  Through this program students have: increased choice and therefore commitment to what they read; exercised ownership of book selection; acknowledged reading as a prioritised, important use of time and resources; reading and book selection is seen as a peer activity; and our students are introduced to the experience of being in a bookshop and buying a book of their choice, sometimes for the first time.  

Student Buy-in – Students’ books of choice:

Selected by Alexis Gregor Year 8 Brigid

This is a book is a biography about Australian tennis player Ashleigh Barty. It explains how she won her first grand slam and became world no. 1 for the first time.

Selected by Archie Teasdale Year 8 Brigid

It’s the 1986 tour of India, and Australian cricket is reeling from the loss of key players to retirement and rebel tours. Few give Australia a chance against a surging

India, and even Allan Border doubts his ability to lead this team.

What follows is one of the most titanic struggles in cricket history. Played in oppressive conditions, the first Test in Madras (now Chennai) swung like a pendulum. Tensions reached boiling point on and off the field. Dean Jones’s 210 was one of the gutsiest Australian knocks ever, Greg Matthews bowled for most of the final day (in a jumper!) and Ray Bright took five wickets despite being seriously ill. The climactic and controversial final ball forced a tie for only the second time in Test history and set a course for Allan Border to remain as captain.

In Border’s Battlers, Michael Sexton details the momentous occasion when Australia drew a line in the dust of Madras, and drew inspiration from the fight. The team returned to Madras the next year to launch a winning World Cup campaign as rank outsiders and the seeds of a new golden age of Australian cricket were sown.