During 2022 students have challenged themselves to read from different genres and literary styles as part of our PLC Sydney Reads the World: Literary Worlds challenge. After our Term 1 experience with Speculative Fiction, students seized the opportunity to explore further genres. Term 2 focused on C.I.A. - Crime, Intrigue and Action books, while Term 3 was a chance to read True Story titles, including biographies, memoirs, and contemporary fiction.
Participants in the reading challenge shared their reviews of books with their peers, helping to build a community of readers within the college.
The top reader for both C.I.A. and True Story was Madeleine Churchill (Year 8). Reflecting on her experience of the challenge this year, Maddie said, “In regards to my experience with the different genres; I love reading true story novels because sometimes they are relatable, and they are more interesting if I can understand or relate to specifically what's going on…And CIA books because they're really suspenseful, and I love that feeling where you kind of can guess what's going to happen next, but something completely different happens.”
Runners-up for C.I.A. were Quyen Nguyen (Year 7) and Violet Lechlein (Year 8). It was good to hear that the challenge encouraged students to diversify their reading, for example, Quyen commented, “The reading challenge did encourage me to read a few more genres that I didn't explore before. I wasn't actually a fan of the crime or mystery genre, but when I was reading for this challenge I began to like it much more. I'll definitely look for more crime books in the future.”
Violet also found the challenge motivated her to read more than usual, “The challenge encouraged me to read a lot more books than I usually would (especially because I am a rather competitive person) and then reflect on what they were about and why I enjoyed them.”
Runners up for True Story were Manal Khodr and Sahana Kumar (both Year 7). Manal said that reading True Story books, “…gives me an insight into the lives of people all over the world. I barely read non-fiction books, but when I entered the challenge, I discovered that I actually enjoyed reading books about people's lives. My personal favourite was Courage to Soar by Simone Biles.” Sahana also found that the challenge encouraged her to expand her reading choices, “I’ve always been an avid reader of all genres, but I leaned more towards fiction. The reading challenge encouraged me to push out of my comfort zone and read books I wouldn’t often pick up unless I found them interesting at first glance. The reading challenge also allowed me to analyse my thoughts about the books and my experience reading them.”
The Senior Library staff was very impressed not only by the number and range of titles that the students read as part of the challenge but also by the reflective approach that they applied to their reading and their willingness to broaden their perspective by trying new authors and genres.
At the Humanities Awards Night on Wednesday 30 November, Madeleine Churchill was awarded the Macindoe Research Centre Outstanding Reader Prize in recognition of her contribution to the reading culture at PLC Sydney, but we also extend our congratulations to every student who participated in the PLC Reads the World Challenge during 2022.
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