On a cold, snowy day in January 11 students accompanied by Mrs Blashill and Mrs Gera visited City Library in Bradford.

We met up with Mrs McKenzie, the librarian from Co-op Academy Priesthorpe and 12 of her book club students.

After playing a fast, fun and furious ‘Getting to Know You’ game outside in the square we then took over an area of City library and had our official launch of the Opus Book Awards. The students from both schools worked well together, swapping ideas, discussing the books and making friends.

As well as reading as many of the 12 selected books as possible before June, our students award marks for the storyline, the characters, and the style of writing and then make comments on the books. The group will also complete a number of challenges linked to the books and the authors.

Challenge 1: Design a trophy: the students have been asked to design the trophy that will be awarded to the author of the winning book after our vote in June. We are hoping to get the trophy made in the schools using the facilities in the Technical Design departments.

Challenge 2: Make a promotional presentation: everyone is going to make a 3 slide presentation to promote one of the books and encourage other students to read the books on our shortlist. We have a wide range of titles, covering many different genres.

We have many plans for the future including author visits and a trip to Co-op Academy Priesthorpe.

All our students were a credit to the school, modelling good behaviour whilst in public spaces, respectful to other library users and everyone made an effort to make friends with a Priesthorpe student.