4816 WINTER NEWSLETTER 2025 Author Catherine Johnson’s Virtual Visit On Monday 24th November, Year 8 students had the wonderful opportunity to join in with a virtual visit from author Catherine Johnson. Catherine has written many stories for children and young adults and all of Year 8 read her gruesome novel ‘Sawbones’. ‘Sawbones’ was so popular with Year 8 that English classes were competing to see who could get to the end first! Catherine’s virtual visit was really enlightening as she explained how hard she had to work to become a writer and all of the historical research she does before writing her books. All of the students involved were totally captivated by her and one student even said “this is the best author visit I’ve attended!” Thank you to Catherine for giving up her time to speak to us. LIBRARY All Things Literacy What an amazing start to the school year we’ve had. There has been so much going on with the library and literacy… we’ve had no shelf-control at all! Some of our librarians spent summer organising all of our books onto a new catalogue system, Libresoft. We are now pleased to announce that all students can access Libresoft from anywhere. Students can get the link from their Google Classroom and use Libresoft to search our book collection by genre, author or interest. Did you know that you can even reserve books on the system and collect them from the library? Our library is open every break and dinner for students to use the computers for homework, to borrow books or just sit in the comfy nook and read. If you haven’t already checked out our real Mini Cooper in the library then you’re missing out! In September, we held a book fair and raised over £600 which means that we will get a percentage of that back in vouchers to spend with Scholastic. If you didn’t get chance to come then we are running a March book fair too, where you can purchase the latest titles, discounted books and a range of stationery. Cash and card are both welcome. The next chapter to this term saw us celebrate Roald Dahl Day, National Poetry Day and World Harry Potter Book Day. We were lucky enough to have Mancunian poet, Mike Garry, visit us on National Poetry Day and deliver workshops and talks to our students. Congratulations to all the students who entered the various competitions; you should have received your certificates. An extra special thank you to all the students who joined us in the library as it transformed into The Room of Requirement and allowed us to create spells, charms and enjoy some refreshments from the train trolley! The final chapter of this term saw us launch the ‘Reading Quest’ with KS3. All English teachers have launched this in lessons and all the information is on Google Classroom for students to participate. The challenge is simple: students are to read two books by the start of the Spring term and complete a different quest for each one. In the new term, all students who complete the two quests will receive a certificate. The gauntlet has been thrown down, so who will be the winner?
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