The recent Readathon at Portland Place has yielded a grand total of £80.00 in sponsor money.
Thanks are sent to all of the participants who gave up their time to read for CLIC Sargent and the Roald Dahl Foundation charities.

The first Used Book Sale of the academic year was held in the library at Portland Place
during the days of the Parent Teacher conferences on Thursday 6 & Friday 7 November.
In all the sum of £75.00 was raised for the four nominated charities. All unsold items
will be donated to Oxfam. A big thank you to members of the community who donated sale
items and to everyone who purchased goods over the two days. Please keep posted for
announcement of further book sales and other library matters.

Sponsor forms have all been distributed to students in Grades 6-10. They should all be returned
to Mr Herne and Mrs Joshi in the library at Portland Place by Friday 7 November, 2008.
All cheques should be made payable to Readathon.

Students and staff had a wonderful time during the recent visits by poet Roger Stevens on National Poetry Day (Thursday 9 October) and Marcus Sedgwick during Friday 10 October. Books are still available to purchase from the library at Portland Place.

This is an online tool which will guide you through your research project. You just have to type in the date where you assignment is due and it will guide you step by step through the things you should be doing. If you want to, it will send you email reminders of where you should be in your project at each step.

The model is based on the Big6, which many of you have seen already. The steps can be seen and worked with very much in depth or more superficially if you don't have much time left.

Have a look at http://rpc.elm4you.org/

Grade 6 have been lucky enough to have recieved a book each for free. How come? Well, the first step was to register Southbank as part of the national campaign "Booked up", which was organised by Booktrust and supported by the Department for children, schools and families. In Southbank, several activities were organised by the librarians at Westminster in collaboration with the English and the EAL department. We talked about books and about the proccess that each of us follows to choose books. By recommendation, by reading the blurb, by the front of the book... Each of us have different ways of doing so.

Each Grade 6 student chose a book, here you have them reading it!

Isabella, Ashley and Carla

Click below for more pictures

Click here to continue reading "Grade 6 are Booked up!" »

At Portland Place Library we have recently added quite a number of new books to stock.

Among the non-fiction ones the collection Countries of thye world stands out. This collection has the latest info in most countries in the World: religion, population, culture, life... very useful for your homework! You may want to check out your own country?

Among the many fiction titles we have new Anthony Horowitz's and Michael Morpurgo's, both of them bestselling (and great!) authors.

Have a look at the lists below, browse the new books and ask the librarian if you have any question!

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Enjoy!

Below you can download a suggested reading list for the summer, according to your grade. These compilations include all your favourite books, as recommended by Southbank students.

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 8

Grade 9

Grade 10

Grade 11

Grade 12

From Westminster Library we hope that you have a great summer!

Mr. Ian Herne
Ms. Ana Cob Canovas

This is an account of the event "Let's hear it for the girls!" that a few students attended on the 1st of February. Olivia Tokola from Grade 10 reports:

February First was the day where I finally went to the event called ‘Let’s Hear it for the Girls!’ - an occasion where Foyles invited anyone who was interested to meet the authors of ‘pink books’, or in other words, books which are written exclusively written for girls. Ever since I had heard of the event the month before, I looked through the calendar until the day came. I had always wanted to meet an author because every time I read a book, I would always wonder where they got their ideas. ‘Let’s Hear it for the Girls!’ was the event where I could finally fulfill the wish.

The best part of the event was that I actually read some of the books of the authors who were coming to Foyles. The authors included Cathy Hopkins, who wrote the Mates, Dates Series, a sequence of books that I liked a lot and Johnny Zucker, whose book Venus Spring was a book that I read from a library a few years ago and highly enjoyed. I also felt it was the perfect timing because I was in the middle of my Personal Project (I was writing a novella) and had been rather stuck halfway through. The event meant that I could ask for advice from experienced authors who knew exactly what they were doing.

When the day of February First came, the mixture of excitement and nervousness reached its utmost point. I was excited because I was finally fulfilling one of life’s goals and slightly anxious because these are highly talented people who I was meeting. What would they think of my questions on writing? It is a silly thought I now realize but surely, the thought has hit everyone at one point! When the last lesson ended, I immediately went to the library where the people in the Book Club (which I am a part of) and the Creative Writer’s Club were meeting. When everyone who was going was present, we all went to Starbucks for a short discussion before we actually went to the event.

It was a small group and we all talked about the Cathy Hopkins books, what are favorite books are and what questions we would ask. This was helpful because admittedly I was a little unprepared.

After the discussion, we went to Foyles where the event was taking place. The entire group was looking forward to going to the event after a month of waiting and as we went up, there was a sense of apprehension of what was going to happen next. When we reached the floor, we saw that we were among the first person to come up. There were rows of seats and on each seat was a bag. We went straight to the first row and each took a bag. I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw in each bag was the new Cathy Hopkins book Cinnamon Girl, (a month before the official publication!), a book catalogue and a poster. As soon as everything was sorted out and everyone who was coming had arrived and sat down, the authors came into the room!

After a few notices were read, all the authors read their extracts from their new books. Some were humorous, some were serious and all were outstanding! After the extracts were read, the publisher who arranged the organization all together, Brenda Gardner, asked three questions of each author. They included inspirations, favorite books and when they started to write and why. The interesting part was that all the authors had the same sources for their inspirations! Some inspirations were from eavesdropping, others were from their own families and some were from friends.

Afterwards, it was the audience’s turn to ask. I was the first one to ask the questions. I asked if they had any advice for writing a fictional book (in this case, my personal project). They said to keep all rough drafts to refer back to, enjoy writing (otherwise there is no point), ask others to read the drafts and most important of all- never give up! After my question, there were several others. I think the most interesting question was the one about which book each author wished he or she had written because the answers were all very different from each other.

After all the questions were asked, everyone was allowed to buy books, meet the authors and receive signatures. I bought two books and I was able to get signatures from Cathy Hopkins and Johnny Zucker! Both of them were very nice people. I also met with Brenda Garder who said she would look at my personal project! When the event was over, everyone agreed that they had a great time there. I had an outstanding time and I will carry the memories of the event.

Pink and proud! A new display celebrating books for and about girls at Westminster Library.

Authors include: Kathy Hopkins, Jacqueline Wilson, Cecily von Ziegesar, Melody Mayer, Cynthia Voigt, Meg Cabot etc.

A few Middle School girls will be meeting favourite author Kathy Hopkins at an event in Foyle's soon... Pictures to follow!

If you are not already a member of a local Westminster library, please drop into the library to pick up a membership form from Mr. Herne or Miss Cob Canovas. Thank you.