DILTON Marsh Primary School has celebrated the opening of a new library facility with a week of book-related activities.
The school’s library recently acquired a fiction section for the first time, and started lending books to pupils to enjoy outside of school hours.
Previously the library had only been for non-fiction titles, but has now doubled in size.
Throughout the week of 23rd November the school put on a number of activities to celebrate, including bedtime stories, guest storytellers, writing book reviews and illustrating their favourite books.
The week culminated on Friday 27th November when staff and pupils dressed up as their favou-rite characters, and renow-ned poet Judith Nicholls came in to read poetry to some lucky students.
Jill Farndale, Dilton Marsh School literacy co-ordinator said, “We’ve never been a lending library before, and it’s always been a non-fiction library. It’s absolutely brilliant to have a library like this and it looks lovely.
“The children love it, each class has a set time each week when they come into the library to change their books and they are really keen.”
Jill paid tribute to the work of teaching assistant Sarah Beveridge, who contacted 200 publishing companies seeking help to stock the fiction section. One hundred of these replied with either books, or a donation.
Judith Nicholls, who has written and contributed to dozens of poetry collections, brought a gift of some of her works to the school when she visited.
A lot of her work is aimed at children, and she has been praised for her accessibility and the joy her poems take in words.
Judith, said, “It’s great. It’s lovely to come into a local school and see what’s happening. It’s brilliant to hear about their new library and to read to some of the children, they were great.”
