庆祝“口袋魔法周” 2023

“Books are uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King

At BSB, we aim to encourage all our students to develop a lifelong love of reading. Primary and Secondary had a fabulous Portable Magic Week and truly learnt that books are an amazing way to magically transport to a different place. Students and teachers participated in many fun and exciting activities and had a brilliant week celebrating books.

The Roundabout Book Fair at BSB

One of the highlights was the return of the popular Roundabout Book Fair at BSB last week! Students were able to buy books to read, share their enjoyment with classmates, and contribute to charity at the same time!

Roundabout is pleased to announce that 54,426 RMB was raised from the Book Fair at BSB last week. All proceeds will go towards supporting Long Long’s surgery and medical cost. Long Long is a 10-year-old boy from a village in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region who was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Thank you to all who have supported the book fair including our parent volunteers, those who have donated books and bought books! Together we can truly make a difference in Long Long’s life!

Primary School

Our Primary Student Council were key in the planning of Portable Magic Week and did a fabulous job thinking of lots of fun and exciting ideas for the week for all students and staff.

• The Student Council picked teachers' names out of a magic hat and during the week. Each class swapped teachers with a different class and had someone new and exciting coming to read to them.
• Every day the Student Council would come round with some magical tambourines and we would Drop Everything And Read (DEAR), stopping our lessons and grabbing a good book for 10 minutes.
• Classes also had guest readers like Mrs. Needham, Ms. Nonie, Ms. Brown, Ms. Debs, Ms Wykes to name a few, come and read an exciting story to them.

• Lots of other wonderful events happened over the week too, like book crafts, reading in unusual places (like on the pirate ship and sports field!), dress up day and of course visiting the Book Fair. An amazing week had by all!
• We also ran a Reading Corner Competition where each class worked hard to transform their reading corner into a cosy and inspiring place to read a book.

Secondary School

2nd March was World Book Day and BSB Secondary (along with the Primary and EYFS) celebrated our Book Week from 27th February to 3rd March. Here are some activities that Secondary students enjoyed:

A whole school dress-up on 2nd March – students and staff are invited to dress up as their favourite book character. Please see a few examples here among many others.

Students can discover how Teachers are celebrating their own current reading by checking out the posters on their classroom windows or doors.

KS3 and KS4 Students engaged in various book week activities organised by the English department, including DEAR time (Drop Everything and Read) during registration, a book swap event on Friday, access to the week-long Roundabout Book Fair (rostered during English class) and other activities.

Secondary reading to Primary students

Thank you for the English department for organising the wonderful opportunities for Secondary students to read stories to some of our Primary students.

Please see some excellent feedback and photos below:

• Mr. Sear, Head of Year 2 - “Thank you so much for arranging this. The Year 2’s had a great morning and the Year 9’s were brilliant with them.”
• Ms. Morgenthaler, Head of Reception - “I spoke to the Reception students after the reading time, and they were all smiles. Please thank the Year 9 students for reading, the younger children really enjoyed it!”
• Mr. Hayward, Head of Year 9 – “I’m pleased the event went so well. The Year 9 students clearly enjoyed reading to/with Year 2 and Reception. I’m grateful for the excellent preparation from the Reception and Year 2 teams. I hope that we can do something like this again.”
• Mr. Burnham, Curriculum Leader EAL - “The EAL students loved this event and seem keen on doing this again. It was great to see them working with the children in early years, they behaved with great maturity. Thanks for the invitation.”

English Lessons Book Review – An Example

My Favourite Novel – by Year 8 Zi Ling Tan

I’ve read a lot of novels and enjoyed a lot of them. I enjoyed them so much that I wish I never read just to read them again. However, if I was to choose one, my top choice would be – ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, by John Green. It’s a really touching novel that’s about a couple diagnosed with cancer and fell in love, a big situation happens in the end, but I won’t spoil it for you if you plan to read it or if you’re in the process of reading it.

The main reason why this book will always be my top favorite is because it brought me laughter and tears. How do you tell if it’s a good book? If the reader cries or laughs. I can guarantee you that ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ is an amazing book, beyond amazing actually. It’s really challenging to write a book that can make a reader engrossed in it and cry over it. This book includes every single emotion that you could ever think of, laughter, sadness, happiness, mysterious and so many more. This book managed to get two international awards. You may think that I’m over-reacting, but I’m not. I really love this book and I highly recommend fiction readers to read it. You’ll absolutely love it if you love romance.

Out of all of the great novels that I’ve ever read, I’ll keep my ground and say that the novel will always be one of the best that I’ve ever read. Just like how I mentioned before, if you’re looking for a novel to read, I highly recommend this book by John Green. That’s my favourite novel.

Please enjoy more photos of our Teachers dressed as Book Characters!