National Simultaneous Storytime

By Rachael Hind and Gemma Wilson, JS Teacher Librarians

On 26 May we celebrated National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) in the Junior School.

NSS is an annual event that has been held since 2000 and is organised by the Australian Library and Information Association. Every year a picture book by an Australian author and illustrator is read simultaneously across Australia in schools, libraries, childcare centres, homes and bookshops.

This year over two million students read Family Tree, written by Josh Pyke and illustrated by Ronojoy Ghosh. Videos of readings by VIP guest readers, including Australian Children’s Laureate Gabrielle Wang, Josh Pyke and Governor-General David Hurley and Mrs Linda Hurley, were available, as well as an AUSLAN version.

We celebrated NSS by creating a Story Walk outside the JS Library. Our students enjoyed wandering by and reading the story and finding interesting details in the illustrations. Additionally, students were able to write their family name on a leaf and add it to our ‘Radford Family Tree’ display in the JS Library.

We would like to acknowledge Scholastic Australia who kindly granted us permission to use Family Tree for our Story Walk.