The Library

The library is central to life at Chapel High School, supporting learning, helping create independent learners and encouraging a love of reading.  Our librarian Miss Hibbert, ably assisted by a team of student librarians, manages the library and leads the activities that take place there. 

The library is popular, stimulating and vibrant, it is open for students to enjoy during break and lunchtime and is often full!  During lesson time, the library is used for year 7 reading lessons, literacy lessons and Accelerated Reading.

Our school newspaper – The Summ’it – is produced in the library with editorial meetings on Thursday lunchtimes. Students and staff are encouraged to write articles for the newspaper. The articles focus on school events, creative work or subjects/topics that they are passionate about.  Our small team of student and staff editors then pull it altogether to create a fully formed newspaper.

The library aims to promote a strong reading ethos in the school.  Students are involved in the annual Readathon, World Book Day activities, author visits and book fairs.  Our hugely popular chess club runs in the library on Tuesday lunchtimes. We have a ‘Whisper Day’ in the library every Wednesday; this ensures that any student who needs a calm and quiet environment to enjoy reading, completing homework etc. has a regular slot to enjoy the library environment.

We are proud to take part in the Bookbuzz programme run by the reading charity, Book Trust.  All students in year 7 choose their own book to take home and keep from a list of suitable titles.  The titles offered are carefully selected by a panel of experts to ensure quality and suitability. Local businesses support us financially to carry out this worthwhile programme with our youngest students to encourage a lifelong love of reading as they begin their secondary school journey.

The library has a large and varied stock of books available for all students to access; this reflects the broad spectrum of the curriculum and provides a superb variety of leisure and academic reading for all ages and abilities.  Students take an active role in buying new stock for the library and have diversified the books available to include graphic novels and books from the genre of dungeons and dragons.  The library also has a small computer cluster and a range of magazine titles for students to read.