World Book Day 2023

This year, World Book Day took place on Thursday 2nd March 2023 and at BGS we celebrated it on Friday 3rd March. Since it was first celebrated in the UK and Ireland over 25 years ago, the day has grown to become an essential calendar fixture for schools, other educational settings and communities. It provides a fantastic opportunity to focus on reading for pleasure, supporting children's autonomy in book choice, and creating a habit of reading that brings a wide range of benefits. At BGS a number of activities were organised to mark the day.

Dressing up!

Year 7 and 8 students were given the opportunity to dress up as a character from their favourite book and it was so lovely to see so many students show up in fantastic costumes, the English Department and Year 12 English prefects also got to take part in the fun of dressing up.

Mr Griffin’s Year 7 class (7ERR). Best three costumes: Skulduggery Pleasant, Matilda and Mr Bump. Can you spot them?

 

English teachers in front of our new World Literature mural - can you work out their characters?

 

 

Drop Everything and Read

At 2:45pm, the bells rang to mark the beginning of our ‘Drop Everything and Read’.  Students and staff were given 15 minutes to read any book of their choice, regardless of what lesson they were in or what activity was going on, everybody had to stop and read. The aim was to give students and staff quality time to enjoy their favourite books, without distractions and just some time to unwind and relax at the end of the school day.

Below are some pictures of students taking a break to read in their PE lesson.

Name the book series competition

Another one of our competitions, learners had to guess the book series based on the clues/prompts that were given. This was quite a fun and challenging competition. Our winner for this competition was Eva Hewitt from Year 9.

Ultimate Reading Challenge

At BGS, World Book Day is a big deal, and we try to find extraordinary ways to celebrate it; and it usually involves a lot of competition. One of the ways we chose this year was the ‘Ultimate Reading Challenge’: students had to submit photos of themselves reading in a funny or unusual position or setting and the student whose picture raised the most eyebrows would be considered the winner. A lot of funny and interesting photos were submitted, and it was nice to see so many students take reading to the next level, however there can only be one winner, and the student we chose was Daniel Lambin.

Daniel Lambin - Ultimate Reading Challenge winner.

And the runners-up

                                               
 

Virtual Author Event

We were lucky enough to book a virtual author event with William Hussey, author of The Outrage, a book set in the near future which depicts a government that strictly controls its citizens, and where being gay is a crime. William Hussey discussed how he got into reading and writing, his childhood misadventures with comic book writing and his passion for defending human rights, especially gay rights which he feels are increasingly under threat. He also read an extract from his new book, Broken Hearts and Zombie Parts, which had all of our students laughing.

Mrs Carey, School Librarian

 

 

Post-it note story competition

Another one of our many competitions, students were required to write a short story on a post-it note and give their entries to Mrs Carey (the school librarian). While this may have seemed like an impossible task for many, a lot of students came through and there were a lot of creative and fascinating entries. After a lot of consideration and thought by a panel of Year 12 English Prefects, Teniola Adeosun from Year 7 was announced the winner!

Teniola receiving his voucher for his Post-it story from Mrs Carey

 

Best costumes of the day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short Story Competition

Finally, every year, to coincide with World Book Day, all Year 7s enter the 500 word Short Story competition. The Year 12 English Prefects had a tough time picking the winner from the 6 finalists (one per form), but in the end decided on this story by Lawrence Macharia in 7ERR. They were impressed by his clever use of multiple narrative voices and the astute, mature psychological insight into his characters - an ambitious and original piece of writing.

Claudia Idahosa, Year 12