We are one of four city schools participating in the Book Connections: Intergenerational Reading Project funded by the Scottish Government’s School Libraries’ Improvement Fund.
A group of our S3 & S4 supported pupils have been undertaking a programme of shared reading with pupils from Dyce Primary’s Learning Den. They read a selection of six picture books including “My Granny is a Pirate” by Val McDermid and “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs” by Jon Scieszka.
To assist with the storytelling we had borrowed a selection of hand puppets from the Curriculum Resources and Information Service. These proved to be very popular and inspired Jayden assisted by Luke to build a puppet theatre under the tutelage of Mr Donald, one of our school technicians. Andrew, a talented thespian, is writing a script and by the end of term we should have seen their debut performance.
Having successfully applied for Scottish Book Trust Live Literature funding we were delighted to welcome the illustrator Kate Leiper (http://kateleiper.co.uk/) to our library on Wednesday 30th May to lead a “Design Your Own Dragon” workshop.
Here is what Kate had to say about her visit:
“I had a super day at Dyce Academy working with the pupils on dragon drawing and was really impressed with the oodles of imagination and creativity shown by everyone. The highlight for me was seeing everybody’s work laid out at the end and comparing all the different ideas, drawing techniques and variety of materials used. I was also very touched to see the care and attention shown by the older pupils towards the younger primary school children as they worked together on their drawings. The librarians and teachers had obviously carefully planned everything in advance, ensuring that requested equipment, resources and materials were ready and available, thereby contributing to the success of the workshop.”
We are not quite finished yet as next term our pupils will be devising book bags with materials to accompany the sets of books. These will then go into stock at the Curriculum Resources & Information Service and be available for city-wide use.