Our School Library

Our library provides a well-resourced, inviting, exciting and inclusive environment that promotes a love of literacy for all students and fosters the development of information literacy skills for life-long learning. It functions as the hub of the school where children and teachers come to gather, connect, communicate and collaborate. We strive to make our library the best it can be as the core of curriculum delivery, providing students with opportunities to appreciate literature and learn instrumental information literacy skills through a well-resourced and technologically equipped environment.

Our library provides our students and staff with a wide collection of recent, popular, quality texts for borrowing. Through established connections with our local library services, students are also able to borrow eBooks onto their devices for reading at home.

Our school library is well equipped with:

• A rich collection of fiction, non-fiction, reference and resource books.
• A state-of-the-art electronic whiteboard used for daily integrated technology activities
• A fleet of duel-platform laptops and iPads which are used in the library and borrowed daily for classroom use

• An extensive collection of board games for use during lunchtime periods

Borrowing from our library

In order to encourage regular and responsible borrowing habits, students at Niagara Park Public School are allowed to borrow a set number of titles at any one time according to the table below.

Kindergarten - 1 book

Year 1 - 2 books

Year 2 - 3 books

Year 3 - 3 books

Year 4 - 4 books

Year 5 - 5 books

Year 6 - 6 books

Extra borrowing is also encouraged over the school holidays (excluding Christmas) in order to promote recreational reading. Children who require more books to read each week may negotiate their borrowing limit with the teacher librarian.

Library bags

Students are encouraged to bring a library bag at all times as library bags protect our valuable books and keep them clean and dry from other items in your child's school bag.

Library bags can be purchased form our school uniform shop or from a variety of retail stores.

Overdue, lost or damaged books

Overdue notes are printed once a week. If you receive one of these notes, please look for the listed book (or books) and return them to the library as soon as possible, even if it is not your child's library day.

If your child has not finished reading their book, we would prefer that they bring it to the library to renew it weekly. This means that students are regularly checking that they know where their book is, and ensures that they do not get any overdue notes for their book which reduces our time (and printing) spent on overdue items.

Students are responsible for the books they borrow, our school requests that any books that are lost or damaged beyond repair are paid for. This ensures that library funds can be spent on the purchasing of new books rather than on replacement costs. Please either send a Sentral message or see Mrs Sparks or Ms Hooper in the library if a borrowed item has been lost or damaged.

Book Week and Book Parade

Book Week is the longest running children's festival in Australia. Each year, many schools and public libraries from all over Australia spend a week celebrating books and Australian authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians and public librarians develop activities, offer competitions and tell stories relating to a theme to highlight the importance of reading.

At Niagara Park Public School we celebrate book week during Term 3 by holding our annual Book Week book fair and character parade,  a highlight of our school year.

The Book Week 2025 theme is ‘Book an Adventure'.

For more information, see the Children's Book Council of Australia's book week page.

Book Fair

Every year at Niagara Park Public School we hold a Scholastic Book Fair in Term 3. The open day we hold as part of our book fair is one of the highlights of our school year, with children (and teachers) dressing up in their favourite book character costumes and participating in a parade that promotes a love of literacy throughout our school and our community.

We look forward to meeting you at this exciting event.

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.

Participation

The Premier's Reading Challenge (PRC) is available for all NSW students in Kindergarten to Year 9, in government, independent, Catholic and home schools.

Our school participates in the Premier's Reading Challenge every year with great success. All students in years K-2 complete the challenge in collaboration with their classroom teacher and the school librarian, who organise the submission of their online reading records for them. Students in years 3-6 are strongly encouraged to continue to complete the challenge and work towards their gold and platinum certificates or medal, however they are responsible for the submission of their own online reading records.

Dates

This year the Premier's Reading Challenge runs from Monday the 24th February 2025, with online records due for students by Friday the 22nd August 2025.

Books read from the 1^st of September 2024 can count towards the 2025 challenge! So start keeping a record NOW.

Privacy

If your child completes the Challenge they will receive an official Premier's Reading Challenge certificate which will be posted to the school.

Two conditions of entering the Challenge are that students may receive a certificate and their name may appear on the Gold (after 4 years of completing the challenge) or Platinum Honour Roll (after 7 years of completing the challenge). Certificates have the student's name and school printed on them, however these are printed by the school and these details are not sent elsewhere. The Honour Roll lists student names in the PRC website only. Names are listed in alphabetical order (not by school) and no other identifying features are included.

How to complete the challenge

Students must complete a set amount of reading to meet the Challenge as set out in the table:

If your child is interested in participating in the challenge, please see the Premier's Reading Challenge website for more details.

The website will give you all the information you need to know such as the rules for the Challenge, the booklists and online help for students. Once your child starts entering their books online they are automatically registered for the Challenge.

Your child will need to login using their DEC username and password. (this is the username and password they use to access their portal, and the computers and internet at school).

Have a question for our principal or teachers?

Our friendly office team can help you get in touch.

Contact us