The last week of January hosted another of our favorite weeks here at EPG – Literacy Week! Literacy helps our students engage with ideas, creativity, and the world around them, and we believe it is critical to develop a love of reading to help our students be the very best they can be. Both Salwa and Salmiya Primary Schools celebrated in their own unique and exciting ways with a full week of fun and engaging programs.

In Salwa, students were delighted with the theme, “Once Upon A Time.” Every nook and hallway in the school was packed with activities which promoted reading for fun, reading anywhere, and reading across a range of genres. Some of the activities included a classroom door display competition which involved everyone’s creativity and cooperation, DEAR day (Drop Everything And Read), and the much-loved Character Day where everyone gets to dress up as their favourite book character. Teachers also posed a challenge for students in “Get Caught Reading”; Children were asked to take a photo of themselves caught reading somewhere and share it on Class Dojo, allowing parents to join in on the fun at home.

In Salmiya, the children joined in our 'Aliens' theme, which provided cross-cultural awareness and highlighted the concepts of Tolerance and Acceptance. Students also traveled in their reading to “Explore Environments” through Science and Geography literature. The whole school was fancifully decorated to role-play that an alien had crashed into school and left codes and clues for students to explore and decode. Each key stage had their own mysterious letter, written in punctuation marks and signs that represent each letter of the alphabet, which challenged the students as they also wrote a letter addressed to the aliens. DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), Poetry Competition, Debates and Extreme Reading Competition were the other activities that kept the children engaged and excited about reading. Salmiya ended the celebration with a Character day where children and even teachers dressed up as an alien.

To further support Literacy Week, both schools hosted a sprawling Book Fair. Hundreds of books were shipped in for the students to explore, from fiction to non-fiction, and from leisure to educational books. Even parents came and joined in the fun, exploring the range of books available for their children. We want all of our EPG family to find their own love of learning, and to grow every day into the global citizens of tomorrow. Literacy Week at EPG has become an important step on that journey.

It was another remarkable Literacy Week at EPG, and we can’t wait to see what our creative students and teachers come up with for next year!