Students at Saint Paul’s Catholic High School in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester took part in the biggest celebration of books and reading in the world when they participated in a fantastic World Book Day.
World Book Day was designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and is marked in over 100 countries around the globe. A main aim of World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading.
With the aim of inspiring and developing their students’ interest in reading, the school organised a series of reading related activities including making origami bookmarks, puzzles, “Match the Character to the Book” quiz and a “Guess how many books there are in the Library” competition.
There were some very nice treats for the winners of the various competitions.
“World Book Day is the perfect opportunity to raise the profile of reading for pleasure and engage our students in reading activities,” explained Mrs Irena Savova, the school librarian. “The students become engrossed in the various competitions and activities and we know from past experience that the events will encourage them to further develop their love of reading. As well as the activities mentioned above, we will also be rewarding the students who have read 1,000,000 words (or very close to a million).”
“This year, we are excited that the celebrations will continue during the students’ library sessions for the following two weeks (library scavenger hunt, book taboo, etc). They will also be given their World Book Day tokens which they can use to get one of the special World Book Day books for free.”
Mr Jamie Sharrock, English teacher and Saint Paul’s literacy coordinator, said: “Research shows that teenagers who pick up a book for pleasure are more likely to succeed in life. The aim of World Book Day is to inspire people to read, it is the biggest annual celebration of books and reading in the UK and the students enjoy participating in the event.”
“Reading is vital to young people’s development; it develops the mind and imagination and allows the reader to discover new things,” commented Headteacher, Mr Mike Whiteside. “Reading should be viewed as a real pleasure, we see World Book Day as a great way for us to encourage our students to read and enjoy more books.”