Reader of the month for March

Reader of the month for March is Robyn McCluskey in S1. She has been working hard and passed 3 quizzes this month with 100% correct and earned a total of 11 points.

Well done Robyn!

Room

Staff Book Group book for March was Room by Emma Donoghue. This was quite a controversial choice and split the group. Some members were unable to finish the book because of the subject matter and others persevered and loved it. It is written from the point of view of a 5 year old child who is imprisoned in a small room with his mother by "Old Nick". Despite the subject matter it is an uplifting story of the relationship between mother and child.
In the afternoon after the meeting Room came up for discussion in Radio 4's "A Good Read". You can still here the discussion on iPlayer.

For April we are reading The Little Stranger by Sara Waters.

Barry Hutchison

By Guest Bloggers

On Friday the 25th of March a group of children from first year attended a trip to Auchinleck Academy to see the author Barry Hutchison. He was talking to us about some of his books, how he became an author and his childhood.

He told us a few very funny stories from his younger days. One of them was about SQUIRRELS!

Barry said that he is afraid of squirrels, because when he was five or six he was seeing his granny in Aberdeen, he saw a squirrel on the path in the park DEAD..! It was all mashed up with a leg missing and its brain pouring out its eye sockets. So now he hates squirrels!

Another one of his stories was when he was doing falconry, (because he is a bit scared of birds). He had the big glove on and the instructor gave him the bird, and said “throw it hard as you can and it will land on the perch.” So he did and it went flying through the air and kept going …AND GOING … (BY THIS TIME IT WAS WAY PAST THE PERCH)…and going till it hit a tree. It fell and flew back and bit him on the face!

We really enjoyed the trip and we definitely recommend his books to everyone of all ages.

By Kieran Madden Aaron Gilmore and Gareth Kerr


Barry Hutchison signing a book for some of our pupils.

Cathy Forde Visit

The author Cathy Forde came to school and talked to S1 on Tuesday 22nd March. A group of pupils from Auchinleck Academy also came along to the talk.
Cathy talked about where she gets her ideas from and told lots of stories along the way, including one about the scary eyes in the ceiling of the spare room of her old house. She also told the story of a scary ghost walk in Edinburgh, and about her horrible P2 teacher who locked a child in a cupboard and left her there.
Everyone was fascinated by her stories and and asked lots of questions. Afterwards lots of pupils told me they really enjoyed her talk.

S2 Readers' Cup Quiz

S2 Readers' Cup Quiz was held in the Library on Thursday 17th March period 3. the question topics were Lucky dip, Eoin Colfer, Witches & Wizards, Historical Fiction and Books& Films. Unfortunately the questions proved to be rather harder for s2 and the teams didn't score as well as S1.
Again the contest was between Finlas and Raecar with Finlas leading all the way through, until Raecar managed to overtake them in the final round with a very good score of 8 points.
Congratuations to the winning team of Tommy Campbell, Stephanie Carrick, Rachel Murphy and Halle Fitzsimmons, and commiserations to John Anderson, Nicky Fairbairn, Lorelle White and Sandy Napier.

Many thanks to the judges, Heather Dunn, Megan Mccleary, Nathan Gilmore and Paige Collins.

S1 Readers' Cup Quiz

The S1 round of Doon Academy's Readers' Cup Quiz was held in the Assembly Hall, last period on Wednesday 16th March. The categories for the questions were Heroes & Heroines, Jacqueline Wilson, Lucky Dip, Comics and Animal Stories.
After a very hard fought contest between all four teams, Finlas and Raecar edged ahead and the contest ended at the bell in a tie with both teams having a respectable 30.5 points.
The final result was decided with a tiebreaker between Finlas and Raecar the following day. Both teams got 6/10 in the tiebreaker and so it went to sudden death and Finlas just managed to answer the last two questions more quickly so they won.
Congratulations to the winning Finlas team of Alana Murray, Morgan Davis, Shannon Clelland and Keiran Madden. They all received W H Smith vouchers.
Well done to the other teams especially Raecar who were pipped to the post.

A big thank you to the judges, Heather Dunn, Lisa McTaggart, Rosie Coles and Hayley Bone.

Carnegie Medal Shadowing

We will be running a Carnegie Medal Shadowing Group again this year. If you join in you will have a chance to read some really exciting new books and give your opinions on them, plus have some fun along the way.
This is the link to the Carnegie Medal page.
We also have a Doon Academy Shadowing Page.

There are some quizzes and competitions at ReadWriteExcite

World Book Night 2

World Book Night free book giveaway continued..

Lots of pupils came down to the Library during mentoring and chose a copy of one of the three titles we had to give away.
Agent Zigzag was by far the most popular, followed by The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

World Book Day

For World Book Day, we invited P6 and P7 boys from Dalmellington Primary School to join S2 boys in the library to watch Eoin Colfer on BBC Authors Live for World Book Day.

Eoin Colfer was very entertaining and had all the boys in stitches laughing as his stories about his awful little brothers and his sons. He uses their antics in his books especially in the Artemis Fowl series to show how the baddies behave!

World Book Night

We gave away lots of books to the staff at morning break. The most popular title was Agent Zigzag. The others were Case Histories and the Reluctant Fundamentalist.

For more information and to give your opinion on the books go to World Book Night.

Once you have read the book, you can pass it on to someone else. All the books have a Book Crossing number in the back. Book Crossing is a global experiment where people release books "into the wild" and the website allows you to enter the unique number and track where your books ends up - or came from.
Happy Reading!

Digi-Tale

www.digi-tale.co is a new website where you can share your thoughts on books and reading. There is also a story widget which enables you to put yourself or your friends as characters.