Literacy is the word of the day for Rainford!

Rainford High School celebrated International Literacy Day earlier this month, with the whole school taking part in literacy activities.

International Literacy Day is celebrated every year since 1965, when it was first proclaimed by the charity UNESCO.

Throughout the day, literacy was alive in all subjects, as each department embraced the event. From hot-air balloon debates in R.E, adverb warm up games in Drama and the use of ‘word coins’ in Technology to encourage pupils to use correct technical language.

Pupils took part in lots of literacy based activities

The celebrations didn’t stop outside of lessons either, at break time, the school hosted a ceremony to celebrate the excellent work the Year 10 Literacy Leaders completed. They were presented with certificates and badges by Principle Ian Young, who then officially opened the new, state of the art library. The name of the facility is to be announced shortly, after all the suggestions from pupils have been considered.

At lunch time, the Literacy Leaders, supported by the school librarian Mrs Relf and Associate Principle for Literacy, Mrs Wheelock, organised a range of literacy based activities for all pupils to enjoy in the library.

Activities included a punctuation treasure hunt, which enabled the new pupils to familiarise themselves with their new environment while gaining a better understanding of key punctuation terms, and interactive grammar games on the new computers.

The activity which generated most interest amongst pupils and staff was the inter-form spelling and grammar treasure hunt which took place in and around the library.

Congratulations to winners Lucy Boycott and Thomas Ralfs (Year 7), Hope Jordan (Year 8), Thomas Barber (Year 9), Jasmine Sealeaf (Year 10) and James Hooton (Year 11) who will be presented with their certificates and prizes in an assembly.

While organised activities took place, pupils also got the opportunity to enjoy the state of the art library and browse the thousands of new books, especially selected to support pupils’ studies and to foster a love of reading.

In addition to the books available for loan in the library, teachers and pupils brought in hundreds of books for the book swap, another special event to celebrate International Literacy Day.

The day was a great success in raising awareness that good literacy skills are vital to succeed in all subjects!