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In November, thanks to National Literacy Trust’s partnership with BUPA Foundation, all primary schools in Manchester received three copies each of Bloomsbury’s collection of brilliant short stories, artwork and poems, The Book of Hopes.
Each school was invited to enter the ‘Scrapbook of Hopes’ competition, whereby teachers and pupils were asked to take inspiration from The Book of Hopes and demonstrate how they spread hope, optimism and a love of reading in their school and community.
Read Manchester are proud to announce that there were three competition winners from the Manchester area: Haveley Hey Community School, Peel Hall Primary School and St Anne’s RC Primary School. Congratulations to all of our local winners!
Peel Hall Primary School in Wythenshawe were keen to share some of their ideas with us on how they shared ideas, activities, drawing, writing, reading and talking to spread hope, kindness and a love of reading.
Peel Hall really value their links with Manchester Libraries, with their activity calendar boasting a visit from a local librarian and a virtual visit to discuss Pan African Literature. Judges were impressed by Peel Hall’s application and emphasised that it was ‘great that they have done activities with all different classes and worked with local libraries to make sure that every child in the school from nursery to Year 6 received a virtual library visit!’ That’s 467 children in total!
Peel Hall’s tips for fostering a school-wide reading culture include:
· Producing a regular Reading newsletter
· an ‘Extreme Reading’ competition
· corridor reading displays
· ‘Reader of the week’ prizes, whereby weekly winners receive a certificate and a book mark.
· creating a Virtual Book Fair
Thanks to Literacy Lead, Afsheen Bassirian for sharing these ideas and photos with us.