This week has been Book Week and the Junior School has been awash with celebrations and initiatives around reading. Book Week serves as a reminder to our whole community that even when life gets busy, making room to read matters.
Our Year 12s started their Tuesday reading and visiting with our young students in Prep to Year 2. It was great way to start the day for all in a fun way as our Junior students and Year 12s in Book Character Day costumes. For our Year 12s it was a fun day of perhaps a little nostalgia with an opportunity to have their last Book Character Day and a light-hearted day for them in a busy Term 3. The morning and day certainly provided great photo opportunities. More importantly it was wonderful to see the genuine engagement over picture books of our Year 12s with some of our youngest students.
Our Pre-Prep to Year 2 students had the chance to enjoy the fun of walking the red carpet in our livestreamed Book Character Day Parade and throughout the day, different year levels visited to read books to our younger students. As Rezaul, a student in Bangladesh supported by Room to Readreminds us, “Nothing can be compared to the charm of reading a good story book.”
As part of our Book Week events, we are proud supporters of the charity Room to Read. They share our passion for literacy and education as a right for all children around the world, regardless of gender or circumstance. For the past few years, we have been consistently one of the top school fundraisers for this amazing charity that does so much for literacy and girls education worldwide. We hope to match our previous donations again this year. It is the support that we receive for our Book Fair that allows this to happen, along with Year 12 donations from Book Character Day.
Education and literacy really are the key to a bright future and the current situation around the world is making the work of charities such as Room to Read more vital than ever. The impact of COVID on education worldwide is significant and perhaps an unseen effect of the pandemic. 1.6 billion children worldwide have been impacted worldwide by school closures due to COVID and 31% of children worldwide are at risk with their learning as they cannot be reached by remote learning. Room to Read remains committed to assisting some of the world’s most vulnerable children.
Whilst reading and literacy have such an important role in learning, reading also can play a significant role in wellbeing. Reading, as long as it is something that is enjoyable, has a significant positive impact on reducing stress levels. Even just reading for 6 minutes has been shown to have a positive effect and a reminder of why we all need to continue to find room in our life for reading. Our KIP has a collection that is always being updated with contemporary and engaging books, and with the recent gentrification of the fiction section, finding a book that you want to read is now easier than ever.
Source: https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/destress-monday/reading-fiction-stress-relief