Secondary Book Week Celebrations

23 August 2022

Alhamdulillah, the Book Week began yesterday in a grand way. This year, our English Department has teamed up with the Humanities Department to mark the occasion.

Our highlights so far:

  • Monday’s event highlight was definitely the HUMAN LIBRARY session in the auditorium, involving 10 staff members acting as a ‘human book’ and our Year 10 to 12 students as "readers". The English Department teachers acted as librarians on the occasion. It was our inaugural event and turned out to be a resounding success. Students sat in story circle groups of 12 and indulged in the richness of stories and fine-tuned their listening abilities, hearing from staff members Mr Fazeel, Ms Rahat, Mr Kullu, Ms Naga, Ms Mubasshirah, Mr Asim Malik, Ms Gulsen, Ms Noori, Mr Bektash and Mr Vis.

  • Tuesday's highlight was our special Costume Parade Assembly: The collaboration and partnership between our English and Humanities Departments saw notable historical and book characters gracing our auditorium stage - from Captain Cook, convicts, WW1 German soldier Alfred von Schlieffen and Martin Luther King Jr to book characters ranging from Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, Of Mice & Men, The Alchemist, Witches, Alice in Wonderland, Coraline, Macbeth, The Longest Memory, The World of Goldilocks to Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The spirit of participation was remarkable and our Secondary students enjoyed the costume parade a lot. Our sincere thanks to the English and Humanities teachers, not forgetting our photographers and student helpers. We will be back in a bigger way next year, inShaAllah.

Selected students came either dressed up famous book characters or as historical personalities as per their learning in Humanities. Each character was introduced to the assembled Secondary students, with amazing outfits on display. Well done to all participating Senior students for the fantastic character display, your efforts are well noted!

  • Daily Homegroup Reading involving all classes from Years 7 to 12. All students coming in the morning need to do a prescribed reading to win class points towards Literacy Olympiad 2022 Tally.

  • ‘Identify the Book Titles and Authors’ Contest got underway as students tried hard to make sense of the six cover pages. The cover pages supplied in the contest have illustrations without the title and author name.

  • ‘Who’s reading What?’ – We have asked Secondary and other staff members what books they are currently reading. A wall chart to record those book authors and titles is now on display in TEAMS

The forthcoming Secondary event are as follows:

  • Parents Competition gets underway soon as well and details will be posted on our website. WATCH THIS SPACE.
  • Launching of our 45 most famous Islamic novels catalogue which features the-must-read-for-all texts.
  • Teachers Competition is to be launched soon as well.

My sincere thanks to the ‘Team of 5’ : Ms Tatum (thanks for your great ideas), Ms Desiree (thanks for your wonderful support), Ms Taybah (thanks for always being there), Ms Shahnaz (thanks for your fantastic assistance) and Mr Baraa (thanks for your fabulous suggestions).

Together, we can achieve anything and yes – we can now – dream with our eyes open!