It’s almost here- World Book Day! A celebration of the wonders of text and a great opportunity to reignite a love of reading for your pupils.
We all know how important reading is and how our ability to read impacts on our daily lives so this is also a chance for you to highlight the importance of reading to your pupils.
Activity Inspiration
ReallySchool has created some free resources, which will be shared on our website very soon!
In the meantime, here are some extra ideas:
- Book show and tell ask children to bring in a book from home or borrow a book from school to share in show and tell
- Think, say, feel- give your images from a story along with a thought bubble, speech bubble and blank heart. Ask them to write how the characters are feeling, what they are saying and how they are feeling in that part of the story.
- Write letters or tweets to an author. Get children to come up with some questions they would really like to ask.
- Research an author- choose or let your pupils choose an author to research. What books have they written? Did they always want to be an author? Where did they grow up? Why did they start writing? Etc.
- What next? Give pupils part of a story and ask them to write/draw what happened next.
- Buddy reading- pupils take it in turns to listen to each other read. Model to partners how to help and encourage each other and ask questions.
- What is the strangest place they can get caught reading? This could be done at home with parents bringing in a photo of their child or in school as a class activity. A school I worked in did this as a home activity. The children loved it and brought it some hilarious photos such as reading on top of a dust bin, in the wardrobe and more.
- Reading challenge- start a whole class challenge to read x times in x amount of time and if they do they have a whole class reward e.g. “Can we get 100 stamps (from the class working together) in a month?”
Display inspiration
Keep your displays simple with displays like…
- Printed off book covers and questions for children to write post it replies
- Use a central question such as ‘What is your favourite book?’ Add yours on and get the rest of the class to add theirs too
- If you carry out the ‘What’s the strangest place you can get caught reading challenge?’ Use the photos to make a display.
- Extracts from books with arrows pointing to text features and explaining why they are used
- If you use the author research activity use this to create a display. You could start by adding a few basic facts and a photo of the author then use the children’s findings to add to it.
Costume inspiration
Lots of schools have a dress up day as part of world book day where children and staff dress up as characters from books. This can be a bit daunting for teachers and parents a like in terms of cost or effort so here are some simple ideas for costumes for your pupils (and you could use them too!)
- Alice in Wonderland- blue dress, apron, hair band
- Matilda- blue dress, red hair band/bow, carry a book
- BFG- DIY big ears. You could also wear a shirt and waistcoat.
- The day the crayons quit- wear all one colour and make a cone hat to match
- Where’s Wally- Stripey jumper, striepy hat, glasses
- Mary poppins- hat with flower stuck on, shirt, bow tie, umbrella
- Paddington bear- red hat, blue coat, wellies
- Fantastic Mr Fox- shirt, bow tie, jacket, diy fox mask.
- Mr Twit- DIY card/paper beard that looks filthy
- Harry Potter- glasses, fake scar, school uniform
- Thing 1 or thing 2- blue wig or hat, red clothes, paper/card ‘thing 1’ or ‘thing 2’ pinned on.
- Little Miss Sunshine- Yellow clothes and hair in bunches/plaits with bows
- Harry and the bucketful of dinosaurs- jeans, trainers and a bucket of plastic dinosaurs
- The scarecrow- face paint, hat and ‘straw’ stuck on clothes
- Cat in the hat- Face paint, hat (can be DIY), bow tie, black clothes.
- The tiger who came to tea- face paint/mask, orange and black clothes.