Who can escape the magic of a great story that comes to life through a good reader? Cornelia Funke addresses this ability in her novel “Inkheart” and fascinates readers of all ages. Her novel has been translated into many languages and made into a film. The story of her novel heroes Meggie and Mo, who can “read” characters from books, enabling them to change from the fictitious to the real world, inspired a wide audience. Again this year, year 1 Secondary School pupils explored these novel heroes. As part of the nationwide reading aloud competition, the pupils trained and proved their magical abilities to bring stories to life.

Since October, the S1 German classes have been selecting the best readers. Pupils who wanted to take part in the reading competition faced the vote in class with readings from their favourite books – and tried to inspire their fellow pupils with their choice of books. Because before they gave a three-minute taste of their self-chosen book, they introduced the story and heroes of their book - which at best made their classmates want to read the book themselves.

The class winners who were chosen in class competed in the next round for the overall school winner on the 4th December 2018. In the John-Peryer room, they competed against and with each other in two rounds for the title of best reader. In the first round, they read a self-chosen passage from one of their favourite books. In the second round, they had to prove their skills by reading a unknown text chosen by the organisers of the competition. The reading performance was impressive. It was certainly not easy for the three-member jury, consisting of last year's winner Mara Banyai as well as Mrs Gassner and Mrs Gehring, to choose the “best” reader.

Finally, the school winners were determined: Lasse Schenke who read from “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” by J. K. Rowling. He will represent our school in the next round in January/February at the district level. Good luck! The second place went Arianna Schmidt-Kärst. The third place was scored by Lydia Myrthes Menescal Heath with a reading sample Cornelia Funke’s “Ink Heart”.

In the end, however, everyone was a winner – not only the winners, but also the other participants, who received book vouchers, ranging from 10 to 50 Euros, but also the audience members in class and the jury members, who were able to get to know impressive reading performances and enchanting books.

“Focusing on the principle of Equality and its meaning in relation to the structure of democratic values in the 21st century " had been the theme of this year's MunoM conference, which was held from 20th to 23rd November. 

The very impressive opening ceremony at the Hans-Seidel Foundation was followed by the sessions of the "UN General Assembly". What began with enthusiastic speeches at the opening session became clearly visible in the meetings" and debates, namely the themes of responsibility for life and, above all, of living together on this planet, whether in the socio-economic, political or environmental sphere. Like a red thread, the conference was about that it is down to each and every person and that everyone is able to make a difference. Motivating for all participants was the guest speaker Julia Leeb, a young journalist, who has set herself the goal to investigate by means of virtual reality journalism, and to tell stories from areas where nobody quite wants to travel to, i.e. Iraq, Libya, Congo, Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, etc. She particulary dedicates her work to the fate of women, not as people to be pitied, but to highlight their strengths. That was remarkable indeed!

The aim of this simulation game is to spark enthusiasm for current political issues in young people, to encourage them to conduct intense research and develop forceful arguments in order to use them convincingly in debates and to discuss passionately with the other participants. English is lingua franca in all discussions and negotiations. The structure of this conference is modelled closely to the real example in New York: participants are assigned one delegation of a UN member state per school.

This year’s MunoM conference ran very smoothly and yielded convincing and realistic resolutions so that the current Executive Staff Team is already looking forward to next year’s conference.

Further information can be found here!