- Tuesday 23 August 2016
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It's time to celebrate Children's Book of the Year award and Book Week!
Engaging students in literature can be a challenging but very rewarding task for teachers. The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) established the annual CBCA Book of the Year Awards and Book Week to engage and promote interest in children’s literature.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Children’s Book Of The Year awards, which are divided into five categories—early childhood, younger readers, older readers, information books and picture books. See The CBCA Book of the Year award shortlist at https://cbca.org.au/shortlist-2016.
The theme for Book Week 2016 is Australia! Story Country.
This is a great time to let your students be creative and help bring stories and characters to life! Here is our top ten things to do to during Book Week:
- Host a Book Week parade, where students dress as their favourite character from a book.
- Transform a well-known Australian-themed text into a drama performance or a movie. Use students as characters or extend roles to include stage crew and videographers.
- Create a gallery walk of book reviews that students have written about Australian-themed books.
- Develop students' understanding of books further by completing cross-curricula story extension activities.
- Re-create a classic fairytale with a modern twist.
- Create a campfire using paper towel rolls as the logs and cellophane as the fire. In groups, students sit around the campfire and share oral stories.
- Allow students to create their own awards for books, including creating a medal design and explaining why their winner was chosen.
- Students write a short story of their own, making up their own main character/s who they think best represents Australia.
- Have students interview staff members (with their permission) about their favourite Australian-themed childhood books.
- For some quiet time, students can watch classic episodes of Blinky Bill or Round the Twist (depending which is more age appropriate).