Library

Library Intent

The Library is a central learning resource for the whole school, supporting all areas of the curriculum in subject knowledge, research skills and literacy. The library promotes reading for pleasure for all – a key activity for life-long learning and emotional well-being.

@edgbarrowLib

@edgbarrowschoollibrary

Year 7

A collection of recommended reads just right for Year 7 - all books available from the library.

Year 7 Reading Routes

Year 8

A collection of recommended reads just right for Year 8 - all books available from the library.

Year 8 Reading Routes

Year 9

A collection of recommended reads just right for Year 9 - all books available from the library.

Year 9 Reading Routes

Please also visit Mrs Mansfield's Wakelet collections for Year 7-9 recommendations.

Birthday Book Scheme

We would like to say Thank You to all of the parents who have donated books to the library so far, whether that be donations of no longer needed books or through our Birthday Book Scheme.The Birthday Book scheme is ongoing so please don’t forget us, we’d appreciate anything you could donate. Click this link for our Amazon wish list and choose which book you’d like to donate and the rest is done for you. The book will be delivered straight to the school addressed to Mrs T Britton. Please ensure you add a note on the order with your child’s name, class, birth date so that we can attach a bookplate to the book in recognition of your donation.

Research Information Skills

Below please find a link below to our poster about how to research information. They include how to reference information, what search engines to use rather than just Google, how to evaluate the information you find and how to be more specific in searching. 

Information Skills - 6 steps

Reading for pleasure article

An article published in the School Librarian magazine highlights a study that finds reading for pleasure helps with test scores in English and Maths.

Reading for Pleasure

Encouraging children to read

Award-winning author Tanya Landman says we need to encourage children to read.

A Desire to Read

Pupil Librarians

A team of student librarians are appointed each year to help in practical and creative ways during lunchtimes. Sixth Form pupils often use their community service time to help in the library, either running book groups for lower school pupils or helping with shelving or displays.

Big Book Quiz 

In between exams, lessons, book buying, processing and cataloguing we have managed to host our first ever Big Book Quiz! We invited some of our local primary schools to compete against a couple of Year 7 teams to see who would take away the trophy (and some book tokens) and more importantly the title of ‘Book Champions’. It was a very competitive morning and all of the students represented themselves and their schools impeccably. The book knowledge amongst these kids was really impressive, I thought we would need a whole load of tie-breaker questions at the end as they seemed to know everything! We did get an ultimate winner, the amazing Six Wild Potatoes from Wildmoor Heath School! We would like to say a big thank you to the schools for coming and for the Year 7s who were really helpful on the day.

Author Visit

Visit by author and poet AF Harrold was very well received by our Year 7 students. He made them laugh, made them think and hopefully encouraged them to read and write more!

Author Julia Golding visits Edgbarrow School

The Library was pleased to be able to host the author Julia Golding at the school on 9th November.

Julia, who has written many popular books for young teenagers, spoke to all Year 7 pupils on the day. Julia writes under several different pseudonyms including Joss Stirling and Eve Edwards but she focused on her Julia Golding Books (Particularly the Diamond of Drury Lane). She was entertaining, informative and encouraging to the pupils.

In addition, at lunchtime, Julia was in the library to sign books and chatted to a few of our Sixth Form girls who attended the event.

Literature Festival

A group of students from Edgbarrow were lucky enough to be invited to attend Eagle House’s Literature Festival this weekend. We saw Andy Cope who taught us all how to be the best we could possibly be and all about how ‘Positivity Monday’ could possibly change our lives! Next, we listened to Matt Dickinson to tell us about climbing Mount Everest and exploding Toffee Crisp bars! Our students presented themselves amazingly engaging with the author talks and book signings. They were a credit to the school.

Students from Edgbarrow School help to break a World Record!

A couple of classes had been selected to join in with World Book Day’s World Record attempt. We ran the World Book Day Quiz in the Library, Monday 22nd February between 2pm and 3pm, and with enough other schools doing it as well we ended up in the Guinness Book of Records! Well done to all.

Author Dan Freedman visited Year 7

On Wednesday 4^th November, Dan Freedman, bestselling author of the Jamie Johnson series came to our school to talk to all year 7’s! This was an amazing experience for us all when we discovered facts about Dan’s background and what inspired him to become an author.

He shared his experiences working with the Football Association and, in particular, the England Team, travelling with them to 2 World Cup Tournaments and interviewing top players such as David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney…. to name but a few! He inspired us all with our reading and writing by sharing information about his exciting books as well as giving us tips and ideas on how to be amazing authors, too. There was a book signing at the end of his visit at 3.20 in the school hall.

@EdgbarrowSchool thanks for having me! Lovely school to visit. Some brilliant questions from the students.

Eagle House Literature Festival

The Librarians were very lucky to be offered tickets to attend Eagle House’s Literature Festival on Saturday and we were able to take 7 students from Edgbarrow with us. It was a fantastic day!

First, we heard Meg Rosoff speak about how she became a writer and to think about not living a “straight-line life” but to consider our choices and think about the decisions we make that could ultimately change our lives.
Next Gillian Cross spoke to us about her book After Tomorrow which is about English refugees trying to get to France and how they survive in a refugee camp – this was obviously very topical and provided an interesting insight into the world we see on the news every night. Our last speaker was Adam Kammerling who is a performance poet/rapper, we all really enjoyed joining in his rap/rhyme games and even got to show off our dance moves to one of his poems! It was a very enjoyable day and a fantastic opportunity to see some award-winning authors and our students represented the school impeccably.

Blind Date Books

Students were invited to pick a book for a blind date; - the books were all covered so they can’t see what it is they are choosing. Each book had a clue printed on the front cover so they could decide if they liked their blind date full of adventure or romance!; The idea was that students read the blurb on the front, and think; Am I interested? Do I want to find out more?; and if you do you borrow the book; to see they had found a match. The one rule was that they don’t peek inside the book until they've checked it out.

World Book Day 

We held a few events in Library for World Book Day which included 'Guess the Book in the Jar, Book Bingo (which students had to sign up for before the day) and some book-themed word searches.

The Librarians dressed up as book characters and we had a lot of World Book Day book tokens which we gave out on the day.

We continued with our ‪World Book Day‬ celebrations on Thursday 5th March with staff dressing up as their favourite character from literature or from a favourite book. This helped to spark discussion as to who they are, why they chose that character and encourage students to read one of the books.

Also, staff submitted 'Shelfies' - during tutor time all students got a

 chance to work out who the different staff members were from their Shelfies which included the book they had chosen as their favourite book and which is displayed in their classroom/office door. Students were encouraged to look at classroom doors to see what favourite books had been mentioned and also promote discussion about some of the books they had seen on bookshelves. Students may be inspired to read one of these texts or speak to the staff about the book and therefore, keep raising the profile of books and reading.

 Reading groups

Over the years, the Library has had regular speakers including authors Pete Johnson and Dave Cryer. Reading groups are run for Years 7,8 and 9 during one lunchtime per week.  The school also takes part in the Berkshire Book Award and the Carnegie Shadowing Scheme.   This allows pupils to be given a free fiction book at the start of their time at the school.  The Library also holds events related to World Book Day in March.