We had such a wonderful, memorable World Book Day last Thursday. For us, the importance of the day is to truly celebrate how much richer our lives are by the wonderful wealth of literature surrounding us. Where would we be without our favourite books, authors, illustrators and all the genres and types of books we enjoy?

The day started with a Bookish breakfast for staff and students. Students had an exclusive sneak-peak at the costume choices of staff. We had everything represented from comic books through to 19th Century classics! Some of our students chose to come wearing a book-themed accessory to show their love of their favourites. Of course Harry Potter is still such a firm favourite amongst staff and students!

The friendly competition between Departments stepped up a notch this year with the introduction of our ‘Book Doors’ challenge! Departments were invited to decorate classroom doors with a book of their choice from a given genre. It was so hard to decide on a winning door as so many were excellent! In first place was RE with their iconic children’s author inspired door – The BFG and Dream Jars were particularly clever and beautifully done! Well done to Mrs Doyle!

In second place were the Maths Department with their fantasy-themed door inspired by ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.’ Such a clever and creative choice – each member of the Department featured as a character! Miss Jones even recreated the wardrobe!

In third place were the Creative Arts Faculty with their crime and detective novel inspired offering! Every member of staff a suspect and each of their trademark accessories could be a clue to the crime! This inspired creative writing by the students. Well done to the whole team.

Book tokens were distributed to all students and the pop-up book shop set up for breaktime and lunchtime in the LRC. Students were able to come and exchange their token for an exciting World Book Day title-there were so many great choices on offer for the whole school. Our most popular titles at KS3 were Dog Man by Dav Pilkey and Alex Rider Undercover stories by Anthony Horowitz. KS4 top title on offer was Split by Muhammad Khan. 200 tokens were exchanged through break and lunch. Our student librarians were rushed off their feet exchanging tokens and offering excellent book advice!

One of the most important aspects of the day is the time we devote to reading for pleasure. We shared a story throughout the day, through each lesson read by every teacher. This year’s choice was a short, spooky offering from Neil Gaiman. The whole school also dropped everything to read during period two and we all enjoyed bringing our favourite reads into each classroom, what a relaxing end to period two!

As a treat, we played the stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s other fantasy novel ‘Coraline’ in the hall at lunchtime and bookmark crafting took place in the LRC as well as more great titles on offer for students to sit together, read and discuss.

Our fabulous families involved in the Family learning programme also took part in activities and reading. Pop up books were created and short story collections were on offer for parents and staff to read and enjoy.

Just as a reminder, students have until the 29th March to exchange their tokens. There are still some books available in the LRC if students wish to exchange their token in school. Students can also use their tokens in participating supermarkets and book stores, as well as to purchase something in the Scholastic Book Magazine sent home to all students.

We are already planning how we can make next year’s World Book Day an even bigger celebration of reading. However, we really do think that every day should be a book day. With recent research published by the National Literacy Trust last month, showing that in 2019 just 26% of under-18s spent some time each day reading, our aim is to encourage and promote the wealth of fantastic literature we have both in our school LRC and in our public libraries and if we all devote something as simple as 20 minutes to reading for pleasure each day then we really can reverse this statistic and create life long readers.

Enjoy the gallery of highlights from the day!