On Wednesday, 26 March 2014, Old Boy and iconic Australian writer David Malouf launched his poetry anthology Earth Hour in the Great Hall. The governor, Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley AM launched the anthology with a talk that placed David Malouf in the context of Australian literature.
Listen to a long conversation of David Malouf and Richard Fidler on ABC Radio here.
Director of Information Services, Cathy Oxley, Paul Kobez, Michelle Ragen and Greg Howes display the new "poetry box" at the launch of David Malouf's poetry anthology in the Great Hall on Wednesday night
Chris Przewola is a Creative Writing PhD candidate at QUT and he came last week to talk to some of the Year 12 boys about writing and publishing.
The Brisbane North 8/9 Readers Cup Competition was held here recently, with teams from 18 different schools competing to represent our region at the Qld State Competition.
Extremely popular author, Tristan Bancks, was out MC on the night and our boys asked him to sign his book Two Wolves, one of the titles used in the competition.
Some of our Year 9 & 10 boys were very fortunate to listen to author Sean Williams at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
Our School Captains took time out this week to read their favourite books, all available from our Library.
Ms Ragen and the Year 11 and 12 Service Committee boys help out at a Homework Club for refugee students each week. Last Thursday they came to our school instead for a variey of activities, including making music with bananas using a Makey kit.
Can't remember the title, just the colour of the book?
We have a surprising number of blue books, so come and check them out.
You might just find your next good read!
Amazing Design and Technology projects created by our Year 12 boys were showcased in the Learning Commons as part of the Design14 Festival - Out of the Box.
Congratulations boys on your innovation and creativity!
Making Christmas trees from old books at our Book Club.
Checking out the World Cup results!!
Posters of our Year 7 Form Seniors reading have gone up in the 7/8 Library and in all of the Year 7 classrooms.Thank you Mr Russell for creating such great posters!!
The response to Ms Hunter's photo competition was enthusiastic and positive with lots of entries in the different categories (People, Places, Action and Animals). Here Ms Hunter is presenting the overall winner with his prize for a skate-boarding action shot.
Ms MacDonald is an avid reader. She came along to Inside Story to talk about how she became a reader, what she read as a teenager, and what she reads now.
Star Wars fans around the world have claimed May 4th as the day to celebrate all things Star Wars.
During the last week of term some of our Year 7 and 8 boys had fun using and fixing up the Makey-Makey kits for The Lunchbox Club. This will be held every week in 2015.
Author Jack Heath visited our school and spoke to all Year 7s as well as working with a small group of keen writers. His entertaining presentations allowed the boys to learn more about the life of a writer and the importance of reading.
Recently, our Year 12 Apollo Club students had the opportunity to speed-date a book with Year 12 girls from BGGS. Each boy had 2 minutes to talk to each girl about his favourite book, then each girl had two minutes to tell each boy about her favourite book.
The boys came away brimming with enthusiasm, and eager to read many of the books the girls promoted.
This week we had the awesome Tristan Bancks here for three writing workshop sessions each with a number of lucky Year 5, 6 and 7 boys. They really enjoyed learning how to write authentically from their own experiences, as well as how to brianstorm their stories with Tristan's free Story Scrapbook app.
Click here to download the pdf for the Quickstart guide. .
After the holidaysTristan returned for a number of writing workshop sessions with some of our Year 5, 6 and 7 boys. They really enjoyed learning how to write authentically from their own experiences, and ended up writing some excellent short stories.
They also learned how to brianstorm their stories with Tristan's free Story Scrapbook app. Click here to download the pdf for the Quickstart guide.
In October Ms Oxley and Ms Van den Hout went to a Brisbane Writers Festival event showcasing amazing stories of courage. Matthew Ames, a quadruple amputee, was a profoundly inspiring speakers with his comment that "every day is a fantastic day." Borrow the signed copy of his book, Will to Live, from our Library (he signed it himself!!).
After seeing the Periodic Table of Epic Reads created by the Epic Reads Team, we decided to create our own Periodic Table of Awesome Reads based on books the Year 7s and 8s have borrowed since the beginning of last year. However, we have decided to add an extra dimension by making each book cover link to a video when scanned with the augmented reality app, Aurasma. Mr Russell has created a book cover template which will become the trigger image for the videos which the boys will now create.
