For the last four weeks since we came back to
physical school, we have been having our library activity with a Year 7s House.
Below is our account of our shorter time than usual with the Short House!
Week 1 was a great start to the first Short's
library activity. Everyone participated in the top heroes and villains in
literature quiz although I am not certain Peter Rabbit and Thomas the Tank Engine
are particularly good heroes! When it came to ‘Reading for Pleasure’ the common
theme seemed to be escaping from siblings - under beds, in cupboards or even in
a tree (although we did decide that if it was snowing, a tree might not work) Sadly, very
few of the pupils had participated in our ‘Click and Collect’ scheme but we
have high hopes that this will change in the brief four weeks that we are together.
I also promised I would bring a copy of War
and Peace to show them in the following week as they were fascinated that a
previous Year 7 could want to read it for pleasure!
In our
second week, after a lively presentation on the Dewey decimal classification
system in which Mr Short revealed his favourite food was Millionaire’s Shortbread
(!), this house was divided into four teams and allocated a different coloured
buzzer which Mr Short very quickly decided he was in charge of. This Short House
is very competitive and the scoring was very tight. In the end the Blue
team (Hartley, Joby, Cate, Isla and Esme) won by being slow and steady with
their answers and stealing points off other teams, ending up with a score of
150! However, the Green team (Indie, Will, Hugo, Yousaf and Nancy) nearly
overtook them at the end by gambling with high scoring questions and getting a
very close 140 points.
Week 3 was
completely different as originally House Dance would have been happening.
Instead, our Short's House Year 7s firstly took part in a very lively debate on
book covers. A lot of you had very strong opinions on what book covers you
liked and what book covers you definitely didn’t. We then had a debate on books
versus e-books. Before starting, 6 pupils said they preferred e-books and 15
said books. An extremely heated discussion then took place with seemingly
everyone having an opinion. At the end we polled the house again and this time
10 pupils said e-books and 11 said books! The YA prize shortlist had just come
out so Ms Johns and I reviewed the 6 books that were suitable for age 11+.
There are some brilliant books in this list and Short's House agreed as four of
the books were immediately borrowed with ‘Eight pieces of Silva’ having two
reservations put on it for future reading.
Sadly week 4 was our last week with this Short's
House as we only had 4 instead of 6 sessions with them. We started by following
on from the amazing Charter Day video which they were shown in assembly last
week. We had lots of discussions about incendiary bombs, rifle ranges and the
redesign of the staircase up to the Great Hall. There were also lots of
questions on Grade 1 and Grade 2 listed buildings. We showed you all a homemade
video of the library as sadly none of you are allowed to visit us at the
moment. We then had a quiz on everything we had talked about in our four weeks
together and more besides. This house is very competitive as I have already
stated and in the end Team Two just won with seven points with Team One coming
second with six points and Team Four coming third with five points – very close
indeed!. Thank you Short's House for our time with you and we hope you will be able to
visit us soon in the library.
Mrs Godden