Reading News Blog
2024 Premier's Reading Challenge
Welcome to the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge
The Challenge aims to encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure in students, and to enable them to experience quality literature. It is not a competition but a challenge to each student to read, to read more and to read more widely. The Premier's Reading Challenge (PRC) is open to all NSW students in Kindergarten to Year 10, in government, independent, Catholic and home schools. If you need help using the website and the answer cannot be found on the PRC Support site, please contact us at prc@det.nsw.edu.au
Links to the PRC website:
PRC Rules including the number of books
How to log on and record your PRC reads
2024 Challenge dates:
Monday 26 February 2024: Challenge opens
Friday 23 August 2024: Challenge closes for student entries
Please see the friendly staff in the Library if you need any help in relation to participating in the challenge or recording your reads.
Smith's Hill High School Library provides students and staff with access to Wheelers ePaltform for eBooks and audiobooks. Students can use the eBooks as part of their reading for the PRC. This can be a great resource particularly for students with dyslexia as there are settings within the eBooks that allow the reader to set dyslexia friendly fonts.
For any students who find reading books challenging, they can also use audiobooks for the PRC as long as they read along with a regular book as well; this is a rule set by the PRC.
For any help with eBooks and audiobooks, please see Mr Jones in the library.
If you need any further convincing that joining the PRC in 2024 is a great idea, have a look at our WHY READ page. Also, the GROW YOUR READING webpage from our website has some easy strategies that will make daily reading a joyful part of your life!
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
Neil Gaiman is held by many as a demi-god of literature, no doubt there are critics of him out there... but we don't go looking for them. In this article/lecture Gaiman advocates for the importance of libraries and reading. He explains why using our imagination, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens. Interestingly, he also talks about why the Chinese government reversed their ban on science-fiction literature around 2007. Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming.