Shelfield Virtual Library
The Lockdown Library provides links to reading resources and useful webpages to help students keep reading while working at home. This page contains lots of information and directs you to a lot of fun stuff! There is something for everyone.
Students and staff have been submitting their Letters from Lockdown. We are compiling an Anthology which documents their thoughts, feelings and musings. Click here to view it.
Welcome to the Virtual School Library, brought you by Oak National Academy in partnership with the National Literacy Trust.
The Importance of Reading in Lockdown
Escapism and distraction:
Reading is a great way to completely block out any worries or anxieties about the current situation, and a chance to lose yourself in a different time, world, universe or reality
Reflection:
Literature is all about what it means to be human. Books can often teach us things about ourselves, allow us to see that our worries or anxieties are not just ours, and offer us advice about the complex business of our lives.
To keep practising an important skill:
Like anything, the more you practise reading, the better you get at it!
| Listen to a free Book | Read a comic/graphic novel | Make a trailer for a book – an animation, GIF, Powerpoint with voice over, or a clip of you talking about your book. Please share! |
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| Write a review of something you have read and send it to… |
Read a book set in a different time or place |
Read in the garden or on your balcony |
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Re-read an old favourite |
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What should I read?
- Whatever you like. Old favourites, graphic novels, non-fiction, fan fiction online – this is reading for pleasure and to just keep the habit going. If you want to challenge yourself and read something a little bit different, check out the reading lists – and see if it’s going cheap on Kindle or Amazon! If you read something over 100 years old, it is often available on the internet as it’ll be out of copy-write.
- Look at the different reading lists on this page
I haven’t got much choice at home – where can I get books from?
There are many free books out there:
- Audible Books –listen to books for free
https://stories.audihttps://stories.audible.com/start-listenble.com/start-listen
- www.researchify.co.uk/audiobooks.html – includes 6 free children’s classics as PDF and word docs, with accompanying audio books: Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan Black Beauty
- Free books from Barrington Stoke
- A load of free on line children’s e-books including non -fiction
Sometimes I find it hard to concentrate and get into a book!
- You don’t have to read it all at once. Start with 10 minutes, and give yourself a reward after! Forming a habit involves having a cue and a reward. The cue might be finding somewhere comfortable and quiet and going there specifically to read, or making yourself a drink or a snack to have while you’re reading. You could set a challenge for yourself to read a certain number of pages – it’s really good to feel like you’ve achieved a goal and it’ll make you more likely to want to do it again!
- You could have a look at the reading challenges for your year group –remember you get rewards from Mrs Dunn and your English teachers!
- How about not reading at all, and choosing an audio book instead?
I find it hard to finish a long book!
Try these shorter reads:
Welcome to the Virtual School Library, brought you by Oak National Academy in partnership with the National Literacy Trust.
Most of you have had some opportunity to take part on lessons delivered by Oak Academy. He good news is that they also have a fantastic virtual library!
https://library.thenational.academy/
Every week a popular children's author or illustrator will provide you with free books, exclusive videos and their top three recommended reads.
Having access to a school library is really important. Oak Academy Virtual School Library will complement your school library and ensure that you have access to the magical world of stories all year round, whether you are learning at school or at home.
Parents- Welcome to the Lockdown Library
We want to make sure your children are still reading during lockdown – as we know how much reading abilities and regular reading habits can positively impact on children’s attainment in school. The Shelfield Lockdown Library aims to try and continue to promote reading while the lockdown continues, and offer support to parents to help their children with their reading.
Reading is a crucial and important skill to help boost children’s attainment. Education research consistently tells us that children who read outside of school have an increased chance of achieving and succeeding in school.
We are under no illusions about how hard it is to get reluctant children and teenagers to read when a phone screen, or tablet, or games console offers easy and instant gratification. If your child has never really enjoyed reading, and sees it as something they consider as ‘work’ getting them to start can be a challenge.
We Are a Reading Community
Our challenge this year and beyond is to create a culture where reading is seen as not only something that we all do for pleasure, but also something which we understand can help us to improve and succeed in all subjects.
How can you help?
- Encourage your child to switch off devices half an hour before they go to bed, and read instead. It’s a habit, and they only need 20-30 minutes a night regularly. Start with shorter times if needed. Taking away the blue light will also ensure that your child gets better quality sleep, allowing the brain to process the day’s learning and ensure what they have learned is remembered.
- Use rewards to help motivate your child to read if they are reluctant, and praise and encourage them as they read
- Talk to your child about your reading habits, or books you enjoyed at their age
- Take advantage of all the amazing free reading resources online during the lockdown – see below.
- Read to your child – you’d be surprised how much even grumpy pre-teenagers actually like being read to – even if you think they are too old for it
- Let them listen to audio books as an alternative
- Encourage them to read non-fiction, graphic novels , comics or magazines – everything helps. Similarly, don’t comment on their choice of book even if you think it is too easy – get them reading first, and they are more likely to move onto more challenging reads later.
- Ask them about their reading. Get them to read their favourite bit to you. Ask them questions about what they think will happen next. Borrow their books and read them and then discuss them.
What if my child is a reluctant reader?
A useful blog if your child struggles to read. Although aimed at younger children, it has some very reassuring advice for those parents struggling to get their boys reading!
What is out there for free?
- www.researchify.co.uk/audiobooks.html – includes 6 free children’s classics as PDF and word docs, with accompanying audio books: Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows, The Railway Children, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan Black Beauty
- A load of free on line children’s e-books including non -fiction
- https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/ - David Walliams website has lots of links, reading and activities for all fans of his writing
Other reading themes resources:
- www.toppsta.com – a website full of book recommendations, including videos and activity packs. There are over 55,000 books reviews – all by children! It also has daily collations of various events happening on line: https://toppsta.com/blog/view/bookish-ideas-if-you’re-self-isolating-with-the-kids
- Cressida Cowell is reading How to Train your Dragon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gopNnXenyQM
- British Library resources– discovering children’s books, including How to Draw a Gruffalo https://www.bl.uk/childrens-books
If you have younger children, there are also lots of interesting reading activities online for them:
- Online resource with books being read by celebrities; https://www.storylineonline.net/
- https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/ – this is fab – full of ideas to help you support children from babies up to 11 year old children with literacy at home – include downloadables, video clips, recommended websites and apps.
- www.toppsta.com – a website full of book recommendations, including videos and activity packs. There are over 55,000 books reviews – all by children! It also has daily collations of various events happening on line: /blog/view/bookish-ideas-if-you’re-self-isolating-with-the-kids
- Cressida Cowell is reading How to Train your Dragon – a chapter a day! The early chapters are on Youtube.
- Michael Rosen’s YouTube channel- stories and poems for children – old favourites https://m.youtube.com/user/artificedesign
- https://toppsta.com/giveaways - The Toppsta website has lots of giveaways when you submit a book review
Our Shelfield Librarian Mrs Dunn recommends
Developing and Extending that passion for their Subjects
English
1984 – George Orwell
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
Anita and Me – Meera Syal
Atonement – Ian McEwen
Beowulf – trans. Seamus Heany
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Enigma – Robert Harris
Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Girlfriend in a Coma – Douglas Coupland
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerlad
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Illiad – Homer
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Junk – Melvin Burgess
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Noughts and Crosses – Malorie Blackman
Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller
Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
The Picture of Dorian Grey – Oscar Wilde 3
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
Refugee Boy – Benjamin Zephania
The Road – Cormac McArthy
Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Lewis Stevenson
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Touching the Void – Joe Simpson
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
Ulysses – James Joyce
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Wasp Factory – Ian Banks
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
Woman in Black – Susan Hill
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
History KS3
Malorie Blackman , ‘ Noughts and Crosses’ series
H M Castor, ‘VIII’
Laurie Halse Anderson, ‘Chains’
Lois Lowry, ‘Number the Stars’
Libby Bray, ‘A Great and Terrible Beauty’
Harper Lee,’ To Kill a Mockingbird’
John Boyne, ’The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’
Sally Nicholls, ‘All Fall Down’
John F Hanley, ‘Against the Tide’
Catherine Johnson, ’Sawbones’
Celia Rees, ‘Witch Child’ and ‘The Fool’s Girl’
Elizabeth Wein, ‘Code Name Verity’
Berlie Doherty, ‘Children of Winter’
Terry Deary, ‘Horrible Histories’ series
Various authors, ‘My Story’ series
History KS4 and KS5
Harper Lee, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Go Set a Watchman’
Kathryn Stockett, ‘The Help’
Deborah Wiles, ‘Revolution’
C J Sansome, The ‘Shardlake’ Series
Hilary Mantel (A Level), ‘Wolf Hall’, ‘Bring Up the Bodies’, ‘The Mirror and the Light’
Alison Weir, ‘The Lady Elizabeth’
Jennifer A Nielsen, ‘A Night Divided’
S E Hinton, ‘The Outsiders’
Ellen Emerson White, The ’Echo Company’ series
Arthur Miller (A Level), ‘Death of a Salesman’
Sharon M Draper, ‘Stella by Starlight’
Richard Wright, ’Native Son’
F Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Great Gatsby’
Psychology KS5
Bad Pharma – Ben Goldacre : How pharmaceutical companies employ sneaky techniques to make their drugs look better than they are.
Forever Today – Deborah Wearing : True story of a famous amnesiac patient, Clive Wearing.
Man (Dis)connected – Philip Zimbardo : Why men are failing in modern society.
Opening Skinner’s Box – Lauren Slater : A collection of short summaries of famous Psychological studies
Patient H.M – Like Dittrich : The most famous case study in Psychology, H.M.
Shrinks – Jeffrey A.Lierberman : The history of mental health treatment
Tell Me I’m Here – Anne Deveson : True story of a mother whose son has Schizophrenia
The Bigamist – Mary Turner Thomson : A true story of a woman’s life with a Psychopath
The Brian that Changes Itself – Norman Doidge, MD : How our brains are plastic and can physically change throughout our lives
The Brain: The Story of You – David Eagleman : How the brain influences our behaviour.
The Lucifer Effect – Philip Zimbardo : The Stanford Prison study
Maths
Alex’s Adventures in Number Land – Alex Bellos
Alex Through The Looking Glass – Alex Bellos
The Code Book – Simon Singh
Fermat’s Last Theorem – Simon Singh
1089 and all that – David Acheson
The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus: The Mathematics of Christmas – Dr Thomas Oléron Evans, Hannah Fry
The GCHQ Puzzle Books
Science
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins
The Magic of Reality – Richard Dawkins
Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
The Gene – Siddhartha Mukherjee
Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World – Rachel Ignotofsky
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – Bryan Mealer and William Kamkwamba
The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond – Christophe Galfard
Fun Science: A Guide to Life, The Universe & Why Science Is So Awesome – Charlie McDonnell
Geography
Horrible Geography book collection – Anita Ganeri
Endangered – Eliot Schrefer
Disaster Dossiers series e.g. Earthquakes – Anne Rooney
Graphic Expeditions series e.g. Getting to the Bottom of Global Warming – Terry Collins
Red Rock – Kate Kelly
Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference – Greta Thunberg
How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time – Will McCallum
Our Planet – Alastair Fothergill, Fred Pearce, and Keith Scholey
Where on earth? Geography without all the boring bits –Jim Doyle
The Man who Cycled the World –Mark Beaumont
The Accidental Adventurer –Ben Fogle
Factfulness – Hans Rosling
The Scramble for Africa–Thomas Pakenham
Geography – Danny Dorling and Carl Lee
Around the World in 80 Days
There is no Planet B – Mike Berners-Lee
World Development – Barry Baker
Adventures in the Anthropocene
This is Planet earth – New scientist instant expert
Beyond the Map – Alastair Bonnet
Canoeing in the Congo – Phil Harwood
Prisoners of Geography – Tim Marshall
The Bottom Billion – Paul Collier
Spanish
Mary Glasgow Magazines
Toro, Toro by Michael Morpurgo (in English)
Spanish children’s stories https://www.thespanishexperiment.com/stories
¿Qué Tal? Any title in the Coleccion Mini Larousse series
Ahora Any title in the DK series Teen Reader -Spanish for example Amigos Virtuales
Ahora / El sol Crónicas de una muerte anunciada – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
El sol Historia de una gaviota y del gato que le enseño a volar – Luis Sepulveda
La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) by Carlos Ruis Zafón
Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis) by Javier Cercas
PE
Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance – Alex Hutchinson
The Sports Gene: Talent, Practice and the Truth About Success – David Epstein
Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance: The Surprising Truth About Success – Matthew Syed
Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice – Matthew Syed
Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcom Gladwell
Luck: A Fresh Look At Fortune – Ed Smith
The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs – Damiel Coyle
Racing Through the Dark: The Fall and Rise of David Millar – David millar
Born to Run: The hidden tribe, the ultra-runners, and the greatest race the world has never seen – Christopher McDougall
Business
- She Means Business by Carrie Green – Carrie started her first online business at the age of 20—she knows what it’s like to be an ambitious and creative woman with big dreams and huge determination . . . but she also knows the challenges of starting and running a business, including the fears, overwhelm, confusion, and blocks that entrepreneurs face.
- The Economist offers authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the connections between them.
- BBC – www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/ The latest BBC Business News: breaking personal finance, company, financial and economic news, plus insight and analysis
- tutor2u – www.tutor2u.net Partners with teachers & schools to help students maximise their performance in important exams & fulfil their potential
- bized.co.uk Free download as Powerpoint Presentation (.ppt), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or view presentation slides online.
- businesscasestudies.co.uk A student and teacher business studies resource center including case studies, theory, teaching materials and lesson plans
- businessstudiesonline.co.uk
- Business Review – Philip Allan
- What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography by Lord Alan Sugar
- Anyone Can Do It: My Story by Duncan Bannatyne
Computing
- Power Of Computational Thinking, The: Games, Magic And Puzzles To Help You Become A Computational Thinker by Prof Paul Curzon
- Problem Solving with Flowcharts & a little flavour of Programming with Python by Achla Agarwal, Krishna Agarwal, Laura Gladrich, Mark Gladrich
- com/courses/learn-sql Online tutorials to read and practise SQL database programming
- My Revision Notes OCR Computing for GCSE Computer Systems and Programming By Sean O’Byrne & George Rouse
When you have enjoyed some of your reading why not write a book review of no more than 150 words and submit it to competitions@scacademy.co.uk
There are lots of opportunities for you to be the writers people will read! Click here to visit our competitions page
Competitions that are currently running and send your entries to: competitions@scacademy.co.uk