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While some of you were glued to your TV sets last night watching the State of Origin, there was another nail-biting competition taking place. Our Caningeraba Readers Cup team were proving why they had spent the past 8 weeks with their noses stuck in their books. Our team who named themselves the Blue Zebras with the motto “Blue Zebras are smarter than Cheetahs/Cheaters" consisted of Finn, Blaire, Maya, Jazmin and Elki. They had a support team of their parents, siblings, Mrs Flynn and myself on the edge of our seats cheering for them, just as many of you would have been doing for your beloved football teams. Our team went in with an abundance of enthusiasm and with high hopes of defending the title and returning the inaugural trophy back to our school library after winning the regional competition last year.
Readers Cup is the flagship event of the Children's Book Council of Australia – Qld Branch. It is a state-wide event where teams of students read a set of 5 novels over a limited time period and then compete against other teams in their region to answer quiz questions. Some impressive statistics that were shared with us from the organisers were that a total of 825 teams across Queensland have registered this year, which results in an estimated 3960 readers participating, with an estimated total number of 12,236 books being read due to the competition. That is amazing to think of all those books being read by young book lovers. This year the books they read were Scar Town, All the Beautiful Things, The Chronicles of Whetherwhy, The Kindness Project and 11 Ruby Road. The school purchased sets of 6 of each of these books to support our students and these will now be available to borrow for literacy circles.
The Gold Coast division had 22 schools participating at Hillcrest Christian College on the 28th May, 2025 including many of the private schools such as All Saints, Trinity Lutheran, Emmanuel, Coomera Anglican, Hillcrest, Somerset, Kings Christian College and AB Paterson. We also had some local state schools including our neighbour school Burleigh State School participating. The competition consists of 5 rounds of 5 questions each with every question worth 2 points. Therefore, each round is out of a possible 10 points. The progressive scores of the top 3 teams were close and changed positions throughout the rounds and we thought that we may have fallen out of a place getting position with one round to go. As a credit to the growth mindset that we instil in our children through our Mind Up Curriculum, our team stayed focused and determined to the very end, believing in themselves and their abilities. The scores after the final round were unknown except we were told that there was a tie breaker situation. All 22 teams had to participate in the tie breaker 6th round of questions.
Then came the moment of the announcement. Well done to Biggera Waters State School coming in at 3rd place on 35.5 points and to Saint Stephen's College coming in 2nd place also on 35.5 points. These two teams were the cause for the tie breaker round to determine 2nd and 3rd place. The biggest congratulations goes to our Caningeraba State School team for being announced the winning team on 36.5 points. They were the only team to have a perfect score of 10 in any round and they saved it for when it really mattered in the fifth round. They were delighted with their success as all their hard work had paid off and they were awarded with their own personal trophy, a personal $25 book voucher, a book prize for the school, a trophy to keep for the school that can now sit as a twin next to the 2024 one and the inaugural trophy got to have a night out on the town before coming back to it's special place in our beloved library. No other school has won the trophy consecutively. We are so proud of our Blue Zebras. They are now invited to attend the State Finals at Moreton Bay College on the 4 September 2025. They will shortly start reading a new set of 5 books and these titles include; The 113th Assistant Librarian, The Midwatch, The Countdown to Yesterday, How to Break a World Record and Survive Grade Five and Spies in the Sky.
Well done to Finn, Blaire, Maya, Jazmin and Elki for their amazing achievement but also I would like to recognise their families for instilling the love of reading in them and all their teachers who have guided them and encouraged them throughout their schooling especially their teachers this year who have been understanding and supportive of their commitment to the team. I would also like to acknowledge that this is a testament to our reading framework and explicit instruction of reading strategies at Caningeraba State School. This demonstrates that our pedagogical approach to reading is supporting our children to gain the necessary skills to read for meaning, which will set them up to be happy, healthy, confident 21st century learners.