Several fund-raising activities were on offer throughout the day with the profits being shared between our new St. James’ Reading Garden and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, who do a superb job focusing on closing the significant literacy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous children in remote areas of Australia.

Students eagerly awaited their chance to participate in The Great Book Swap, which has been an annual event, where they were able to swap one of their loved books from home for someone else’s.

Book plaques inside each book described why students would enjoy taking this book home. Many students chose to generously donate these books straight back into our Reading Garden which means we will all have a chance to enjoy them.

This year we introduced some new activities to promote Indigenous Literacy Day. Students looked forward to being partially out of uniform by taking part in ‘Close the Gap, Wear a Cap’.

A guessing competition was held too where the students had to guess how many words were in one of our brand new library books, ‘Tiddalik’, a popular local Dreaming story.

Any student who participated in all four activities had the added bonus of having their names put into a prize draw. Winners of the guessing competition and the prize draw got to choose from a selection of brand new books including ones on Australia and the outback to take home.

Many students left school with a full tummy, a treasured book, a sense of satisfaction that they would be donating to such a worthwhile charity and pride in our small community that we were able to raise around $550 from our efforts.

Congratulations St James’ Primary School Muswellbrook, what great community spirit and Christian values you exude.

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