Schools bring stories to life for World Book Day

Schools across Henley celebrated World Book Day yesterday with colourful costumes, reading challenges and creative activities designed to inspire children to enjoy books. Pupils dressed up as their favourite characters, swapped stories with classmates and took part in quizzes, writing workshops and treasure hunts that brought stories to life.

Badgemore

At Badgemore School, the day started with an opportunity for parents to visit their children’s classes and share books together. This was followed by an assembly where the children could see and celebrate each other’s costumes. The rest of the day included a range of activities designed to celebrate a love of reading, including a book scavenger hunt and author games. English lead and Maple Class teacher, Iqra Fiaz, who was dressed as The Queen of Hearts, said, “We really want to foster a love of reading, both at home and at school. We have a Reading Cafe once a term anyway, where we invite parents in to share books, so this is an extra opportunity to celebrate what we love!”. Headteacher, Mr Hoskins, was rushing out to a partnership meeting dressed in his homemade Super-tato! costume. “I can’t believe the Trust have schedule a meeting for today of all days! I love to be here and will be doing the meeting dressed as Super-tato, then rushing back to school so I can join in with all the brilliant things that are going on!”

Rupert House

The teaching staff joined in at Rupert House with them all dressed as 101 Dalmatians, with Mrs Clough, Head of English, taking on the role of the infamous Cruella de Vil. Throughout the day, pupils took part in a variety of creative, book-themed activities. In French lessons, the Reception children listened to the story Le Monstre Vert and enthusiastically helped to name the colours and parts of the monster’s face in French! Later, Year 4 practised describing their own costumes in French, consolidating their knowledge of clothing vocabulary and colours. Year 1 read an extract from Fantastic Mr Fox and wrote about their chosen costumes and illustrated themselves as their characters. Creative activities also included designing bookmarks and creating original book covers. Inspired by The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, Year 2 explored the idea of creativity and “making your mark.” Each child transformed a simple blank dot into a colourful and imaginative book cover, complete with a title, author and illustrator.  At lunchtime, the kitchen ran a competition to see who could find the hidden golden tickets on the children’s lunch trays to win a home-made chocolate brownie.

Sacred Heart

Captain Underpants was a favourite costume at Sacred Heart School with both pupils and Mr Bains the Year 2/3 teacher.  Lessons came to a halt in a “stop everything and read” challenge.  Teachers read their favourite books and the children could then choose which book they would like to go and listen to.   Key Stage 1 pupils enjoyed booked themed activities throughout the day and Key Stage 2 enjoyed the sunny weather with a scavenger hunt where they had to identify different authors and book titles.

St Mary’s

At St Mary’s their World Book Day brought authors and historical figures to life with creative dress up. Children came dressed as a famous/inspirational real-life person. A historical figure, author, inventor, leader or change maker. The children had a wonderful day of activities to support the day.

Trinity

Trinity had a packed full day of activities which included the children trying to guess who the teachers were behind the Masked Readers videos.   In their assembly there was video of photos of the children who had entered the extreme reading competition (reading a book in an usual way or place) including one pupil who was reading a book inside a washing machine!  The school chose Roald Dahl as their author this year with classes making magic potions for George’s Marvellous Medicine, dream catchers for BFG and traps for Enormous Crocodile.    Each teacher was given a Willy Wonka golden ticket to give out for a pupil who had really participated in the day for them to attend a VIP hot chocolate experience with the headteacher Ms Whittle.  Reading Leaders across the school who had read 50 books were also given a bookmark to give out to their pupil wearing their favourite costume.  Deputy Headteacher, Mrs Newman said, “There’s been lots of excitement throughout the school today.”

Valley Road

As well as the dressing up at Valley Road School, there were creative writing opportunities aplenty. Year 6 had been set the challenge of writing a story about a dragon and a backwards walking person, and Year 3 were making and illustrating their own books to share. Class teacher, Kate Richens, also explained that the children had been enthusiastically making a book den, which they were able to crawl inside and read in. In the afternoon, the whole school were due to Drop everything and read – an initiative that English lead, Michelle Rogers explained was designed to encourage the pupils to put everything down that they were doing and just pick up and enjoy a book.

If you would like to purchase any of the high resolution digital copies of the photographs featured here, please email us at news@henleyherald.com