Authors of today and tomorrow
In encouraging our children to embrace the author within, we have had many authors visit the school including John Boyne, Marie Burlington and Oisín Mc Gann with storytelling from Neil de Burca. Every year we celebrate World Book Day with a variety of literature based activities. We proudly display our children’s stories and poems for all to read. This year 1st, 2nd , 5th and 6th class participated in the Write a Book award with fantastic success!!
World Book Day
Every year in March we celebrate World Book Day, the biggest global celebration of books and promotion of the enjoyment of reading. On this day, we all participate in a variety of literacy based activities including quizzes, word searches, interactive IT games and many more. We encourage children (and some staff!!) to make costumes and dress up as their favourite character from a well loved book. We hold a little competition for each class to see who has the most creative costume.
During the day children from the older classes participate in paired reading activities with the younger children, reading favourites from the class library or reading a story that they themselves have written. Children are also encouraged to bring in their favourite book to read. The Senior pupils (3rd-6th class) participate in a huge literacy based table quiz with book tokens and books for the lucky winners. The Junior classes perform small dramas for their peers based on traditional tales, incorporating props and costumes into bringing stories to life.
This fun, fantastic day is enjoyed by all as can be seen in our gallery below.
Write a Book Project
The Write a Book Project is a wonderful initiative organised by the Blackrock Education Centre. Through this project children have an opportunity to write and create their own book. It provides children an opportunity to explore different genres and to engage in the important process of writing, including planning, drafting, editing, re-drafting, publishing & binding. It also allows children to write for other audiences such as family, peers and children in other schools. Once completed, the books are swapped with those of another school, so pupils can experience the writings of other similarly aged children.
This year 1st, 2nd, 5th & 6th class participated in the project with fabulous creations completed. After the project was over, all books were displayed in the Rachel Murphy Hall and every child was presented with a certificate at a special Awards ceremony in the school.
Fighting Words Workshop
Each year different classes attend the Fighting Words workshop in Dublin. This centre was established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love. Fighting Words helps students of all ages to develop their writing skills and to explore their love of writing.
The Fighting Words fieldtrips and workshops are created and run by volunteers. The volunteers include professional writers – novelists, screen-writers, journalists, poets – aspiring writers, student teachers from DCU and all the Dublin colleges of education, retired teachers and many more people who are just keen to be involved. Helped on by Fighting Words tutors, they write a story which is projected onto a big screen.
The children decide on the characters and plot, and write the story sentence by sentence. They edit, and make corrections as they go. Meanwhile, a volunteer artist draws an illustration or two, to go with the story.
The group’s element of the writing takes the story about three-quarters of the way through the plot. Then the pages are collated, printed, covered and bound with several blank pages at the end, so each child can write and illustrate his or her own ending, at school or at home. A photograph of each student the Author Photo – is incorporated on the back cover of each book. Each student leaves Fighting Words with his or her own book.
This is a fantastic field trip and is free of charge.