Ah, World Book Day….possibly every English teacher’s favourite day of the year. And of course, an excuse for fancy dress, something which I haven’t been able to get away with since my uni days. But how can we make the most of it – to maximise its potential in encouraging our students to love the wonderful world of reading for pleasure? And it’s not just as easy as getting them to laugh at my attempt to pull off Katniss Everdeen…..
It seems that World Book Day is largely celebrated in primary schools and merely acknowledged in secondary schools. However, I’m now lucky to work at a school that throws everything at World Book Day and I couldn’t be happier (did I mention my love of fancy dress….) Last year was my first experience and I was amazed by the amount of staff that dressed up, and not just English teachers. We also have a fab librarian who goes around the canteen at lunch time giving out free copies of the £1 books – there’s a real buzz about the place. We also get a short story read out over the tannoy – separated into 5 parts, with each part being read at the start of a lesson.
Last year I also ran two events in the run up to WBD. Firstly, I launched Readathon in the January, giving students until WBD to collect their sponsorship money. Read for Good are a charity that raise money to provide brand new books and story tellers to children in hospital – a very worthwhile cause that fits in with our Character ethos. It’s very low effort but high impact. I go into assemblies to launch it and show their promo video via YouTube which is very inspirational. I then ask my English colleagues to hand out the forms to all students in their classes. Of course, what I’ve found out is that just because you ask something to be done, doesn’t always guarantee it will get done. That’s one huge lesson I’ve learnt since starting this role. It can be frustrating and heart breaking when you still see all the forms sitting there a week later. But I’ve come to realise and accept that it’s not personal. Teachers just don’t have time. And I can relate to that. We’re bombarded with tasks every single day and I can totally understand that handing out a form isn’t on top of that priority list. My workload sometimes feels unbearable too (I’ll do a different blog on that soon…) However, I need to make sure these events are successful, so it’s a tough one.
I also ran two competitions in the run up to WBD. I discovered the ‘Pizza Box Review’ via Pinterest and thought it would be a really fun and creative way to get students to share what books they’ve been reading. I even got our local Domino’s to donate the pizza boxes and a gift voucher for the winner! (Never underestimate the power of asking for freebies – I do it all the time!)
The other competition was ‘guess which teacher is behind the book’ and I created a page of photos of staff who obscured their faces with the book they were currently reading – lots of entries and the winner was announced on World Book Day.
So now I’m thinking ahead to this year’s World Book Day – is there anything more I/we could do? I’ve already launched Readathon (and again the box of forms is still half full…) and I plan on doing the pizza box review again. But I’d like to do something else. I want to do something genuinely whole school. Something that actually makes the students want to read. And I’m thinking….perhaps giving students some famous opening lines to novels, those lines that are so intriguing, you just have to continue reading to find out what happens. I think it might work!
Would love to hear what your plans are for WBD this year. But more importantly – who are you going to dress up as?!
Leading Literacy 