Middle Park State School’s ‘Burrowing Bookworms’

More than 5500 students participated in the inaugural Online Readers’ Cup during the Online Literature Festival 2007.

The collaborative online project focussed on the Children’s Book Council of Australia 2007 shortlist. Students completed a series of quizzes based on each of the listed books.

The winning team in the ‘Book of the Year - Younger Readers’ category was Toowoomba Grammar Junior School’s ‘Year 7 H Team’.

In the ‘Early Childhood’ category, Middle Park State School’s ‘Burrowing Bookworms’ were the winners.

Both schools won a one hour chat with their favourite author.

Middle Park State School teacher Katrina Crook says the whole school was excited when the Burrowing Bookworms won.

“It was amazing to watch the children as they began to cooperate more to help solve the questions. I could really see the children start to think and share cooperatively as they realised how necessary it was to work together as a team. I am especially proud of the Burrowing Bookworms as they had to work by themselves in answering the final set of 22 questions in the library due to problems with the download speed in the classroom.”

The school set up a digital projection system so the whole school could watch the Bookworms compete in the final. Many students even stayed in during lunch time to watch the action and then ran about the playground yelling ‘we won, we won’ when it was over.