Forget Glastonbury - it's the Sacred Heart Festival of Reading!

For this year’s Festival of Reading, staff and students took part in a wealth of events focused on encouraging and celebrating a love of reading! As always, participation was excellent and exemplified the joy of reading felt across our school.

Years 8 and 9 were lucky enough to have workshops with author Sue Reed, discussing her book The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn, about fifteen-year-old Molly, uprooted to live in the wilds of Northumberland where she meets a girl from the seventeenth century. The students were immaculately behaved and reported really enjoying the talk, gaining insights into the book, as well as the writing process. (Read on for more details about this event).

We also had a Scholastic Book Fair in school all week, with students running down at the end of school to grab copies of the latest releases, such as Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (part of The Hunger Games collection), ‘Til Death by Busayo Matuluko, and Powerless by Lauren Roberts.

Students who had successfully taken part in this year’s Paired Reading schemes were given a voucher to spend at the book fair and had some exclusive access to browse the bookshelves. Attendance at the Book Fair was our best-ever, with students and staff making the most of the opportunity to explore new books.

Mrs Perry ran her ‘Dancing with the Stars of Literature’ session where year seven and eight students learned to dance the Sir Roger de Coverley, a traditional country dance mentioned in A Christmas Carol, Stig of the Dump, Sons and Lovers, amongst others.... the girls had never danced like this before but threw themselves into it and asked if they could teach it to the rest of their classmates!  (Read on for more details of this event).

Attendance at the Festival Poetry and Spoken Word Open Mic was also fantastic and we had excellent contributions from students across the key stages and members of staff. Now a tradition at Sacred Heart, many students debuted their own original writing, one student even being inspired to write a poem during the event which she then performed at the end! Not only poetry, but also rap and musical theatre were performed by (electric) candlelight.

Miss Mackay’s legendary reading treasure hunt resulted in Year 7 students running all over the school deciphering clues and seeking the (reading) treasure! Ms Bossons and Mrs McAloon set up a pirate-themed escape room for Year 8 Library lessons, as well as holding a ‘Booknic’ in the Library for Year 7 and 8 Book Quiz Queens!

The Festival ended with another Sacred Heart tradition: Drop Everything and Read. All students across the school dropped everything in the last lesson on Friday afternoon to listen to a brilliant recorded reading of All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury. A thought-provoking but relaxed ending to a wonderful week of reading! Thank you so much to everyone involved in organising and running such a fantastic event, especially Mrs Floyd, Ms Bossons, and Mrs McAloon!