Welcome! The School Magazine is proud to present a virtual showcase of wonderful writers and illustrators. The festival provides quality literature in reading, writing, illustrating and engaging with the wonderful world of words. Nurturing literacy and reading are at the heart of the magazine.
The festival is an amazing celebration for students to meet their favourite writers and illustrators from The School Magazine. There are pre-recorded vox pop videos from the artists talking about their craft, fun activities and lots more!
The virtual festival is suitable for all schoolchildren in year 2 to year 6. It will run for five days between Monday 24th to Friday 28th August 2020.
Please note: each day’s link will GO LIVE for that day at 8:30am. It will be accessible for 2 weeks.
Note: Day 1 and 2 are for everyone (Ursula Dubosarsky and Geoffrey McSkimming)
Another Note: Days 3, 4 and 5 (Sylvia Morris, Christopher Nielsen, Zoë Disher and Jacking Hosking) are for Subscribers Only. Subscribers will need to be logged into The School Magazine website with their teacher/individual login to view these links.
A Wonderful World of Ideas
Solve our Find a Literary Festival Word puzzler!
Colour-In our Literary Festival A4 Poster!
TSM Treasure Hunt: Ask the students to write the letters A-Z on a piece of paper. Using the printed copies of The School Magazine, the digital content, or a combination of both, challenge students to find a piece of text (a poem, a play, a story, an article, or a character) that begins with each letter of the alphabet.
Leave a Message: Brainstorm a list of voicemail recordings that students may be familiar with eg ‘Hi, you’ve reached …’ or ‘Sorry I can’t take your call at the moment …’ Ask students to think of their favourite fictional character, either from The School Magazine or from a book they’ve read, and imagine what that character’s voicemail recording might be. Encourage students to think outside of the box! Here are two examples to spark the imagination: ‘Hi, you’ve reached Auggie Pullman. Sorry I can’t take your call, I’ve gone to the Dark Side. Leave a message and this Jedi apprentice will get back to you as soon as he can.’ (Auggie is from Wonder and he’s a huge Star Wars fan.) Here’s what Mr Erasmus (the host character from Orbit) might say, ‘What a whifflacious day, my dear friend. I’d love to be able to take your call but I’ve just poured myself a hot cup of tea and, as you know, I am not the fastest of creatures, so I fear that my tea would be cold by the time I walked all the way over to pick up my phone. Do forgive me, and please call back.’
Missing Host Character: Your favourite TSM host character has gone missing! Ask students to select their favourite host character from Countdown, Blast Off, Orbit or Touchdown and imagine that they have gone missing. Challenge students to design a Missing Character Poster using known information. Students might like to follow this format: Missing (name of character), Last seen (choose a place that you know that your character likes to visit), Likes (mention anything that may come to mind), Appearance (draw a detailed illustration).
What if?: Ask students to come up with a single ‘What if?’ question, relating to The School Magazine, a particular book, or a favourite fictional character. For example, ‘What if you could have one superpower? What if you were the author of Harry Potter? What if books were forbidden? Have students put their questions into a hat and take turns pulling out one and answering it.
Student Gallery
You can view our Student Gallery displaying the work of students who participated in the festival.
Schools are encouraged to contribute to the gallery display. Teachers should submit selected work their students have created as a result of our literary festival to the email [email protected] with the subject line ‘TSMLitFest–SCHOOL NAME—Student Gallery.
A Quick Survey!
The School Magazine Team would love to receive your feedback about our first Literary Festival. Your treasured feedback will let us know how valuable the virtual event was for your students and school. But also, we would appreciate to know if you would love us to host more literary festivals in the future.
Fill out our quick Literary Festival Survey!
More information
View the full Literary Festival program PDF
If you have questions about the Literary Festival, you can view our Lit Fest Frequently Asked Questions PDF.
We have 140 author signed copies of Tales of All Kinds: The World of Ursula Dubosarsky left! Nab these signed copies for your class from our Online Shop before they sell out! First in, best dressed!
