Mulan performance day

The end of the week has arrived and Mulan will be performed twice today. The publicity team have worked well and produced some display boards, programme, intranet adverts and pictures for the main screen at school. They have taken video and plenty of pictures of what has been going on during the week.

The videos are on the MSJ website :

http://www.malvernstjames.co.uk/senior-school/latest-news/expressive-arts-week-for-years-7-and-8

and showcase what has been going on in small bite-sized pieces.

The girls have had lots of fun and have been full of enthusiasm and excitement. Roll on this afternoon!

Expressive Arts week begins

Year 7 & 8 will be performing Mulan this Friday afternoon. They have a fun-packed, but busy, week ahead.

Tour of the library

A quick tour of the library using a flip camera and using Windows movie maker in preparation for Expressive Arts Week that starts on Monday.

Creating a new board

We are currently revamping a large notice board in the library. It is going to be a Challenge Me! board that has lists of current competitions that are on offer both inside and outside of the school and it's going to have more indepth articles on it for pupils to browse.

We have found that our media board that has a daily digest of news articles gets a lot of positive attention - so the idea is to ramp it up a level and put up longer stories for pupils to get their teeth into.

It's a pretty light blue colour at the moment - soon to be covered in interesting things.

It will be intersting to see if anyone notices!

Hello MSJ!

The front cover of the Yr 9 magazine

The girls managed to finish editing and constructing their magazine just in time for the Wednesday afternoon deadline. They worked so hard over the 3 days and the result is epic. It is a fun, interesting and well thought out production and the girls have learned so much about team work, organisation and deadlines.

Marvelous magazine!

The Yr 9 group have come up trumps and produced a fabulous magazine! They have worked incredibly hard for three days organising, writing and designing their publication.

They have definately learned a lot in the process including how to work as a team and how difficult it can be to work to a tight deadline.

The articles are a good mix of serious, fun, good -humoured and current interest. They have thought about style and design and tried to create a product that has themes running through. I will post a page or two soon.

But well done Yr 9!

Yr 9 Independent Learning - Hello MSJ!

A group of seven Year 9 students have been set a three day task to produce their own version of a Hello! type magazine aimed at everyone that is involved with the school. They have elected two editors and have planned their activities for the day.

They have had a couple of meetings to track progress and are working really well as a team. They have come up with some entertaining and orginal ideas. I am particularly interesting in the article called "What's in my locker?" which is going to reveal the truth about the things that they keep at school!

What will the cover of the Year 9 magazine look like?

They are finding that designing a magazine is quite a tricky process especially to get the look professional. At 3pm they will be coming together to review their draft pages and plan for tomorrow.

Carnegie/Greenaway Awards - results

So the results for the Carnegie/Greenaway books will be released later today. Some of the pupils here read the books and reviewed them on the official website. http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/grouphomepages/index.php?GroupID=322&pollresults=1

The award is a good way of introducing a different selection of books to a class and helps pupils experience a range of different writing styles in one session.

The Greenaway books allow pupils to evaluate the impact that pictures have on a reader and if the book works for them. Both fiction and non-fiction made it on to the list this time. I particularly like this one.

Library Thing

Have just started to use Library Thing to generate some suggestions for reading on a topic. It's an interesting way of doing things that throws up a list of reader reviewed books. It's based on a wide ranging readership base but it's a new place to start. You can check it out at www.librarything.com/ and try your own searches.

It also provides you with the most revewed and top 25 books. Good to see that The Hunger Games is in there!

Read it Loved it

I came across this site today Read it! Loved it! and thought that it was useful.

http://readitlovedit.com/home.html

Gives some ideas for what to read when you feel like picking up a book. The site has been designed for best use on an iphone/ipad.

Pratchett books

I have been catching up with my long forgotten list of Terry Prachett books recently - and reading them on my phone, which has been an interesting introduction to the world of ebooks.

Hace read and throughly enjoyed: Snuff, Unseen Academicals (who knew football could be such fun?) Going postal, Making money and the Firth Elephant.

London Olympics

The current display in the library is focused on the oylmpics and is matched up with some great reads on the games past and present, along with an excellent use of bunting on the board!