Year 10 Reading Challenge 2021
The Year 10 Reading Challenge is an event that we take a lot of joy from in the English Department. It feeds off the Year 9 Challenge, run by Mrs Summerfield as part of the Year 9 Library Programme, and it connects seamlessly into the NCEA Level 1 Independent Reading internal standard that our Year 10 students begin with their first reading response taster.
We enjoy the sharing of books, suggestions, and ‘must-reads’ that get passed around, and the recommendations from teacher to student and student to teacher! Our library keeps stocked with a continuing flow of new titles, so between Classics yet to read and contemporary new authors just on the scene, there is a lot for everyone to choose from.
Some of the texts students read during this challenge include: Out Now, edited by Sandra Mitchell; Boy, by Roald Dahl; Down Under, by Bill Bryson; Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley; Emma, by Jane Austen; Go Get a Watchman, by Harper Lee; The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe; Becoming Michelle Obama, by Michelle Obama; Flight Path, by David Hill; More Than This, by Patrick Ness; Sybill, by Flora Rheta Schriber; Savage Spider, by Nick Arnold; One Piece, by Oda Eiichiro; Phylogenetic Context for the Origins of Feathers, by Stuart Sumida and Christopher Broche; I Have Lost My Way, by Gayle Forman; This Winter, By Alice Osman; The Last of the Sky Pirates, by Paul Stewart and Chris Ridell; and The Girls I’ve Been, by Tess Sharpe.
We are deeply grateful to the Gaffney family, who continue to support and encourage the reading culture at LPHS, and donate generously each year. We share their love for reading and the voice that grows ever louder that tells us what an important love, skill, culture, revelation it is to hold onto and grow.
Congratulations to all the Year 10 Reading Challengers and to all readers everywhere - what a gift!
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]
― Carl Sagan,Cosmos
The Year 10 Reading Challenge Place-Getters
10A
Improved Reading Ability - Kasem Zarzar
Improved Reading Ability - Abdallah Alashour
Greatest Effort - Eliza Hennephof
Great Effort - Belle Hohaia
10S
Most Texts Read - Quinn Wilson
Classic Choice - James McMillan
Reading Bingo - Charles Ross
Reading Goal Met - Oscar Kennedy
Range of Texts - Brie Abernethy
Special Mention - Sophia Goodin, Jula-May Taylor, David Zeng
10B
Best Reading Response - Ally May Sharma
Most Texts Read - Kai Sweeney
Classic Choice - Oscar Lambeth
Range of Texts - Fen McIntosh
Reading Goal Met - Hannah Barton
10X
Best Reading Response - Ruby-Louise Grant
Most Challenging Read - Arlo Bickerstaff
Best Non Fiction Choice - Tamsin Norrish
Most Varied Genre Choice - Ava Agatsiotis
Commended Effort - Smith Walker-Greaves
10U
Classics and Variety Prize -Maia Jack
Tolkien Appreciation Prize - Louis Robertson
Critical Awareness and Maturity of comments - Hannah Hogan
Numerical Superiority - Nathan Mutch
Exuberant Comments and Range - Grace Fagerlund
Highly Commended - Lauren Davey and Abi Gibson
10K
First Place - Chris Hunt
Second Place - Mathew Simpson
Third Place - Quinn Byers
Best Reading Response - Erin Byas
Best Comments - Anna Trendall
Highly Commended - Dakoda Tinirau-Connolly