Books have been educating and inspiring us for thousands of years, so it goes without saying why World Book Day is a well-deserved celebration.
Books are the key to other worlds, which enrich our minds and allow us to escape temporarily from reality. At BISL we aim to instil the love of reading in our students, actively encouraging students to read from a wide genre of books, and from a diverse range of authors. We pride ourselves on the success of our English language provision for our students. Celebrating World Book Day is something we look forward to every year.
Our Sixth Form students pre-recorded some fantastically engaging stories for our youngest students in Early Years and Key Stage 1 to enjoy. It was wonderful to see our role models spend the time to record these videos together, and equally wonderful to see our younger students enjoy listening to them so intently.
In Primary we started World Book Day by sharing our favourite books and transporting ourselves into different worlds. Students were encouraged to bring in props from their favourite stories so that we could play a character 'guess who'. They enjoyed sharing their favourites with their classmates, we even had some books translated by students, which was very special, and read out in their mother tongue.
Our Primary students also enjoyed a range of activities, some including writing their own versions of their favourite books. Students were even able to become illustrators, creating alternative illustrations for well known books as well as their own unique creations.
To kick start World Book Day in Secondary, students took part in a book hunt around the school. Teachers displayed their favourite books along the hallways with explanations of why they like this particular book, and students had to match the teacher to the book, testing how well they know their teachers.
Throughout the week in the English department, students have been encouraged to reflect on why they enjoy reading and write a book review, either on a book they’ve read in school or a book they’ve read recently at home. This included our students on still on distance learning on Zoom - many picked their favourite childhood book, whilst others simply couldn’t pick just one!
Click here to read our student voice article highlighting some of the book reviews written by our Secondary students.
World Book Day wasn't just celebrated in English, our Slovene lessons were something special this week too! Our Secondary students in both Slovene Advanced and Foundation lessons have been very enthusiastic and engaged in creating covers of their favourite books in their own unique ways. They wrote Slovene titles and some key thoughts to represent their chosen books. Vesel svetovni dan knjige!
Also, have you seen all the little Hungry Caterpillars in Early Years? For World Book Day our Early Years children made The Hungry Caterpillar out of egg boxes. They were very patient waiting for the paint to dry overnight, and spent the day meticulously adding eyes, mouths and antenna! Look carefully, they are using a special joining technique to keep the antenna in place...
