Library News
The Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge is well underway at Lalor Secondary College. The Reading Challenge is designed to encourage Victorian school students from Prep to Year 10 to read more books. Students read a certain number of books over the seven months from February to 7th September 2018.
The program has been explained to all Year 7 students at the end of Term One. All Year 8 students have also been assigned usernames and passwords which were given to them by their English teachers. It is also pleasing to note that there are some Year 9 and 10 students who are also participating in the Challenge this year. It is still not too late to join up! Any students from Year 9 and 10 who wish to participate, please let the Library staff know.
Lalor Secondary College has been participating in this program since 2011. Last year, we congratulated a record highest number of 117 students who completed the challenge! . Our registered students have read a total of 3,125 books. This was a truly amazing achievement. We are hoping we can beat this record.
To complete the 2018 Challenge, students will need to read 15 books. A minimum of 10 books must be selected from the Victorian Premiers’ Challenge Booklist, a copy of which will be available from the Library Resource Centre and online from the Victorian Department of Education website (http://www.education.vic.gov.au/prc/). The Challenge is not restricted to books in the English language. Students can read books in any language, such as Arabic, Italian, Vietnamese, Macedonian and Greek.
Students must keep a list on paper of all the books they read and after they finish each book, they must ensure their English Teacher or a Teacher Librarian signs their record. Once students have fulfilled all the requirements, they hand in their paper record, as well as the printable online book record, to the library.
To keep our Challengers engaged and inspired to read more books, we will be providing rewards. This includes students receiving a School Value Card for every five books read, to encourage them to read 15 books. The other major reward is every student who completes the Challenge will receive a special invitation to a Fun Lunchtime Party.
New Books
Parvana : a graphic novel by Deborah Ellis
This is a stunning graphic novel edition of the well known novel with the same title, Parvana. The story tells of a eleven-year-old girl called Parvana. When soldiers burst into her home and drag her father off to prison, Parvana is forced to take responsibility for her whole family, dressing as a boy to make a living in the marketplace of Kabul, risking her life in the dangerous and volatile city.
Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World by Reshma Saujani
This book is filled with dynamic artwork, down-to-earth explanations of coding principles, and real-life stories of girls and women working at places like Pixar and NASA. It also shows what a huge role computer science plays in our lives and how much fun it can be. This book clearly explains how coding works to help you to your own apps, games, and robots to make the world a better place.
Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai
As a child in Pakistan, Malala made a wish for a magic pencil that she could use to redraw reality. She would use it to give gifts to her family, to erase the smell from the rubbish dump near her house, to sleep an extra hour in the morning. As she grew older, Malala wished for bigger and bigger things. She saw a world that needed fixing. And even if she never found a magic pencil, Malala realized that she could still work hard every day to make her wishes come true.
Ms S. Graetsch
Library Resource Centre Manager
