GLF Schools Celebrate World Book Day!

GLF schools are celebrating World Book Day today in an exciting literary extravaganza. Multiple schools across the Trust have hosted days of celebration to mark World Book Day in an effort to encourage a love of reading for pleasure in their students.

The celebrations are doubly meaningful in the National Year of Reading, a government backed campaign to encourage a love of reading amid declining rates of reading for pleasure in young people.

Whyteleafe School is kicking off a whole week of reading celebrations by beginning each school day with ‘Drop Everything and Read’. For 15 minutes, everyone - including staff - will stop and read, with children bringing in their favourite book. Throughout the week, the school will also be running reading buddies sessions, where classes pair up with another year group. Each class will split in half, and pupils will spend 30 minutes reading together. This week Whyteleafe welcomed children’s author Ifeoma Onyefulu into school, who ran engaging workshops for all pupils, and they have also run a Book Swap.

Cuddington Primary School are celebrating with a range of exciting activities designed to inspire a love of reading. Throughout the day, children will join together to create a whole-school virtual story about a mysterious door that has appeared on the playground, share books with different year groups, and take part in the school’s much‑loved Vocabulary Parade.  

Meanwhile, Warlingham Village Primary School has invited pupils to dress up as a book character or in their pyjamas to promote bedtime reading. All pupils read with a 'buddy' from another year group, and had a chance to present their favourite book to their class. Pupils are getting creative by illustrating an extract from a book chosen by their teacher. 

Danetree Primary School is celebrating World Book Day by exploring the ‘You Choose Fairy Tales’, which invites children to make their own fairy tales in a book which is different every time. The school is also using books including ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ to explore themes such as prejudice, journey and belonging.

Salfords Primary is inviting pupils to take part in their extreme reader challenge, asking them to send in a photograph reading somewhere silly, unusual or funny.

Limetree Primary School has pupils bringing in their favourite books, with teachers also getting involved to recommend some of their favourite children’s books to pupils.

Warren Mead are celebrating World Book Day by dressing up as a word to honour the power of language and the magic of books. Throughout the day, the children immersed themselves in celebrating language and reading. They have shared books with one another, discovering new stories and authors; designed their own books, bringing their ideas to life and are writing stories inspired by the word they have chosen to embody. 

Children at Cordwalles Junior School are taking part in a number of reading related activities across the school, including a live World book Day Quiz English lesson, a playground disco at breaktime and taking the opportunity to enjoy reading for pleasure as all children have a book they enjoy reading to pick up at different points throughout the day. 

Meanwhile, Marden Lodge School is hosting a dress up parade on World Book Day itself, with a week of activities including a competition for pupils to design and make their own bookmarks.

Floreat Montague Park Primary School & Nursery is hosting several activities. Children are creating their own book covers by picking adjectives at random from a bowl and then choosing a noun at random. Using these words, they create a book cover and idea for a book based on the two they have picked. Meanwhile, teachers are swapping to read to each other’s class, as well as sharing their favourite books with pupils across the school.

James Nicholson, interim CEO of GLF Schools, commented: “The celebrations today across our schools have shown that a love of reading is very much alive and well at GLF. For our children, a love of reading for pleasure results in academic achievement, but also a skill for life. Our pupils are enriched with knowledge, culture and curiosity by reading, and our schools have done a brilliant job over the course of this week of encouraging reading as a habit for life.”