(Our mystery guest – Ms Lundin! Photo cred: Ms. Lockwood)

OSC’s Book Week and RtR

Book week had a brilliant kick off this Monday – 21st February 2022 – with many book-themed decorations around the school and various activities for the students to partake in throughout the week.

Our service group, Room To Read, spent a large amount of time preparing for this book week and making sure that the events we held would be beneficial toward our projects with Bapajaya Vidyaloka Maha Vidyalaya School. After a very successful book drive, where we were able to collect an abundance of books to donate, we decided that selling a part of these would be a good way to raise funds. These funds would then proceed toward Bapajaya Vidyaloka Maha Vidyalaya School and the building of their library.

Additionally, we made posters in order to promote the Author Talks that would be held during lunch – as a way of engaging with the students and sparking discussions about books.

(The poster Eleez and I created for the Mystery Guest Author)

Whilst the author talks were carried out, there would be a book display (one book sold for Rs. 250 and Rs. 500). On Wednesday (the Mystery Guest day!) I supervised the book sale, I think that it was rather successful as multiple people bought and reserved books. Also, we were able to make Rs. 12,103 with these books – amazing!

On top of this, for Wednesday, I was the one who spoke the intro and outro for the Myestery Guest – Ms. Lundin. I didn’t quite realize I would be doing this, but was VERY excited to! I first talked a bit with Ms. Lundin about what she would like in the intro, yet the two of us settled on something very simple and light-hearted.

I was able to attend about 3 Book Talks in total, including the session where I supervised, and all were very enlightening. Moreover, I was delighted to note that during every session all the seats were filled and the audience was very interactive with the guests. This denoted that the Book Talks were very successful.

(Mr. Lockwood’s Author Talk. Photo cred: Ms. Lockwood)

There’s one more Book Talk tomorrow during lunch – make sure to attend!

Learning outcomes:

• LO2 – Challenge and skills
  • I think that with this project for our service, I was able to exercise my creative skills and speaking in front of an audience.
  • Although I was a bit nervous to talk at first during the intro and outro – I think that I was able to challenge myself with on-the-spot public speaking and making sure that the audience was engaged.

• LO4 – Working collaboratively with others
  • This Book Week was very teamwork-oriented, I had to communicate a lot with the other members of Room To Read and people who were involved in Book Week. 
  • It was very refreshing to see so much efficient teamwork that allowed us to pull through with Book Week.

• LO6 – Global engagement 
  • As a main part of Book Week was service and to raise funds for Bapajaya Vidyaloka Maha Vidyalaya School, we got to engage with global issues surrounding lack of funds and resources for schools – at a local level.