Library Opening Week
By Emilia Zajac and Keith Hogan
Our school, Skerries Educate Together, had a week of fun events to celebrate the opening of its new school library.
On Monday the illustrator and author Ale Mercado taught second and fourth class how to draw Pablo, a character from one of his books. The children had the chance to depict Pablo as a cat, a dog, a superhero or anything else they could think of. Ale gave out a simple template of four panels so the children could create a short comic and the children drew comics about Pablo eating his breakfast.
On Tuesday moring we had the official opening of the library. The opening was filmed and a live stream was broadcast to each of the classrooms so all the children in the school could watch. The school choir sang ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams while Joanne played the keyboard. The Student Council (Nova, Jessica, Brandon, Caelan, Kate, Finn and Sean.) read out a poem by Dr. Seuss called ‘I can read with my eyes shut’. Tomás, our principal, then spoke and mentioned how much detail and hard work was put into the opening of the library. Then it was time for Finn and Jessica to cut the yellow ribbon and officially open our brand new library. After, we asked Tomás why he thought the library was so important to the school, he said “it’s very important to foster a love of reading in children”.
Later that day, Lauren’s, Louise’s and Niamh’s classes had a fun lesson on drawing different types of creative monsters with the author and illustrator Niamh Sharkey. She called it ‘Monster Doodling’. There were four large sheets of paper spread across the P.E hall. The children used their imaginations to come up with the best monsters they could. Some monsters were happy and some were angry but they all looked amazing.
On Thursday, Joe O’Brien came into Alison’s and Dara’s classes to teach them how to ‘Cook a book’. He told the class you need ingredients like an enjoyable plot, interesting characters, a fast pace, a good title and moments of drama, danger and humour. After that, he read one of his stories to the class called ‘Beyond the cherry tree’. He also showed them how to plan a story and afterwards they had to write a short story using all of the above ingredients.
On the same day, Colm Keegan a poet and spoken-word artist came into Conor’s and Cian’s classes. He told us (in Cian’s class) that when you’re a poet or a writer everything becomes interesting and the smallest things can create a great poem. He got us to write a poem about something we loved or hated or about a precious memory we wanted to share. When we had done some writing we read out our poems and Colm pointed out all the best things about our writing. On Friday, to finish off our library opening week, all the children in the school were given a free book and a bookmark.
