Students, teachers and staff celebrate World Book Day 2024
Monday, 11th March 2024
On Thursday, 7th March 2024, our staff and students came together to celebrate World Book Day 2024, an annual celebration of authors, illustrators, books and the joy of reading. The day aims to promote reading for pleasure and offers every young person the opportunity to have a book of their own.
To mark World Book Day 2024, students, teachers, and staff engaged in various activities, from fancy dress and design competitions to guest speaker sessions and dedicated reading time.
Students in Year 7 were encouraged to attend school in fancy dress as well-known or favourite book characters, and it was fantastic to see the variety of characters the students chose: from Oompa Loompas to Thing 1 and Thing 2, there was a wonderful array of characters.
Once again, our staff throughout the school rose to the challenge of dressing up, and they even decorated their classroom doors. Each department chose a book from a specific genre and fully embraced the spirit of fancy dress. The corridors were filled with colourful doors; The Maths department turned into Hogwarts; MFL became Wonderland; and Music took a trip on the Polar Express.
As part of the celebrations, we ran a Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) session during the first 30 minutes of Period 1, encouraging students and staff across multiple year groups to immerse themselves in the pleasure of reading. Additionally, students participated in a 'Badly Described Book Hunt,' where they had to identify the book being "badly described" and which department they had found it in. The first student to return a correctly completed sheet won a £10 National Book Token.
Our annual Bookmark Design Competition was launched for the third consecutive year, inviting students to create designs for our new Library bookmark, which will be professionally printed and used for the following year. The student with the winning design will also win a Kindle Fire Tablet, with tokens for our book vending machines for second and third place. The competition closes on Thursday, 28th March.
As a reward, 20 students from Year 7 and 30 from Years 8, 9 and 10 participated in our first-ever World Book Day Big Book Quiz. Teams of five battled it out to be crowned the winners. Teams in Year 7 and 10 were victorious, winning medals and £5 National Book Tokens.
To tie in with our World Book Day Celebrations, award-winning author Simon James Green visited RBHS on Friday. In addition to his writing and life as an author, he spoke to Year 10 about book banning and censorship, and Year 8 & 9 received a hilarious talk about "owning the awkward." Book signings were held at break, and he finished a jam-packed day with a workshop about "Ideas" for 20 students in Years 8 and 9. The students had a great time and generated some fantastic ideas!
School Librarian Sophie Wilson added, “Reading is important all year round, but it's always exciting when World Book Day arrives. It was such a treat to see our students and staff embrace the spirit of World Book Day, getting involved in the great activities on offer; there was a real buzz around school all day! Rounding off our celebrations with a visit from Simon James Green on Friday was a perfect way to end the week and a real highlight of the year!”
Thank you to all the students, teachers and staff who took part. Happy reading!
