What is your favourite book and why?........

This week is National Literacy & Numeracy week as well as Education week.

One thing we all know is that to be successful at school students have to be readers. Schools think reading is important and this week we are focusing on reading as part of our Education Week activities.

Like many schools in 2013 we have been looking closely at the national curriculum capabilities and working on new ways of learning in literacy, numeracy, digital literacy and thinking. Our goal is for 80% of students to reach stage and age benchmarks in each capability.

For Year 7 this will be a challenge because our assessment of their literacy and numeracy in early Term 2 showed that the majority of students had not achieved the benchmarks at the end of Year 6. This has given us a great opportunity to be innovative in our solutions, especially because the government has given us $435000 over 2013-14 to spend on improving Literacy & Numeracy.

In Term 2 we assessed all Year 7 & 8 students as part of the Personalised Learning program and we employed three outstanding consultants to work with the teachers and students. We spent a lot of time preparing teachers for teaching subject based literacy and numeracy in new and creative ways.

We are now ready to launch our new programs in Education Week. There will be:

• • a special "We are Readers" edition of Missing Link with teachers and students bringing in and sharing their favourite books.
  • a special assembly for Year 7 and their parents to talk about reading and the new Year 7 Literacy Program
  • a special display in the library of great books for teens
  • a meeting with Year 9 to call for volunteers to be trained as Literacy Mentors to work with Year 7 students who need more help in Term 4 in a special program
  • a preview of the new Numeracy program to improve critical skills needed at high school

At the heart of our activities will be the chance to share our favourite books and to show that, like all successful learners, our teachers and students are readers.

With everything from comics to Game of Thrones, from stories of sporting greats to great romances like Pride & Prejudice, from science fiction to crime thrillers we will be talking about books.

Why not help us by telling us via our Facebook what is your favourite book and why?