Happy New Academic Year!

It's September again! Seems that it came round really fast this year, but we were glad to come back to our lovely students and a new intake of Year 7s who seem more excited about reading and books than any we've had so far, so it should be a great year!  Have already identified a key group of comic fans who I'm hoping will join us to shadow the Stan Lee Excelsior award.

So, what's going to be happening this year?  Hopefully, loads! I've had my contract upgraded to full time, from term time only and a set number of hours per day, so fingers crossed, all the little extras and activities that I've always wanted to get going (yes, including regular blogging) may finally get off the ground. I'm looking forward to the following things:

• NaNoWriMo! I'm going to be hitting November at full pelt again this year, with a large crowd of young writers at my side.  There will be snacks.
• 24 Hour Readathon.  It took a surprisingly short amount of time for the students to convince me that it would a good idea to do this again. It certainly was an experience last time, even if it did lead me to the woeful conclusion that I'm too old to pull an all-nighter.  Woe, woe and woe indeed.
• Reading programmes with Year 7 and 8.  In consultation with our literacy coordinator, Mrs Briggs, we're going to be getting Reading Passports for all our younger students and using these as a keystone for our work on developing good learning and reading habits, and reading for pleasure.
• Scholars' Projects.  This is an expansion of the Nerdfighter projects that we started working on a few years ago, and will be targeted towards our Gifted and Talented students, known as the Roundwood Scholars.  There'll be more structure to it that the 'off you go' attitude of the Nerdfighter ones, but there is a lot of student crossover so I know I'll be seeing some amazing work! Hoping that I can engineer a trip to Alton Towers as a reward. No, not just for me, for the students.  And me. I do love a good rollercoaster... *sigh* 
• MOAR BOOKS! We don't really need to go into detail with that one! There will be more books, and more reading. Along with coffee, that's the best thing ever.
• Craft Club. This will be continuing after school on Thursdays, so our knitters, crocheters and sewing fans will have a weekly focusing session, possibly involving snacks. 

I'm also going to be following the progress of some of my local librarian colleagues, who are trying out a new system of working with the non-fiction parts of their collection.  The idea is to make it much more focused and more directly relevant to curriculum modules, tying non-fiction back into research and learning.  It's a wonderful idea and a mammoth undertaking to get it in place, and I have absolute admiration for those who are trying it out! 

It's going to be a busy year.  Looking forward to it :)