At the beginning of November, YCIS Qingdao held its annual Book Week, with a variety of student-centred activities. Before the start of the week, the academic departments prepared for the upcoming event with engaging and meaningful events. This year’s Book Week was a blast!

At YCIS Qingdao, Holistic Education is one of the key factors that lead to our students’ success. Students are encouraged to acquire knowledge through Project-Based Learning methods, to develop soft skills such as critical thinking, and to become life-long learners. Book Week most certainly embraces the Yew Chung’s philosophy of promoting Holistic Education practices.

The themes of this year’s Book is “Word Time: Rhythm and Rhyme,” a theme which encouraged students to explore the imaginative world of poetry. Throughout the week, students had numerous opportunities to learn how words can express emotions, thoughts, and ideas.

YCIS Qingdao was also honoured to host Mr. Karl Nova, a poet and rapper from the UK. During Book Week, Mr. Nova not only held workshops for all of our students, but he also engaged with our students through his masterful performances and entertaining stories. Students were thrilled to have face-to-face talks with the author, through which they gained an in-depth understanding of the power of words and poetry.

Book Week celebrated reading across the school through a variety of activities. From ECE to Secondary, all students showed great passion for the fun activities provided during the whole week. Some of the highlights were the Door Decoration Contest, Bookmark Design Contest, Reading Contest, Poem Reading, Word Games, and the Book Fair in the lobby. Students, along with their parents, contributed to the activities and showed their support.

One of the highlights of this year’s Book Week was the Dress-up Parade. Students could either dress up as characters from a book they love or as idioms or expressions such as “it’s raining cats and dogs” and “tickled pink.” The students’ costumes and idioms demonstrated their understanding of language and knowledge of and love for books.

Books are the greatest gift one can give to a child. The annual Book Week at YCIS Qingdao aims not only to provide our students with more opportunities in Language Acquisition, but also to promote and encourage logical thinking, imagination, creativity and social responsibility. We sincerely wish that each member of the YCIS Qingdao learning community develops a passion for reading, as it is a key factor to one’s success.