World Book Day Buzz
Last week saw The RGS Family of Schools celebrate World Book Day in superb style. This annual event is held to promote reading and the power of books, and across the Schools pupils and staff took part enthusiastically in a range of enjoyable and fun activities. There was some serious attention given to the importance of reading in all our lives!
The highlight of the event was the launch of the ‘Read for Good Sponsored Read’ in Years Seven and Eight. This raises money to provide books and storytellers for children in hospitals across the UK. Pupils will raise money by reading as much as they can over a two-week period and collecting sponsorship for their efforts. Even in the first few days, a significant amount of money has been pledged and the School has been full of pupils with their heads stuck in books! Year Seven pupils have already started their Readathon and Year Eight will begin soon.
Across the School, lessons (and not just English lessons!) featured reading and book-related activities. There were quiz questions answered, crosswords solved, brilliant books designed, blurbs & blogs written, assemblies delivered and alternative endings to famous books created. The Guess the Teacher from their ‘Shelfie’ competition was particularly popular.
As usual, our RGS book clubs led from the front. The Year Eight Book Club took part in a ‘Famous Author Balloon Debate’. Pupils imagined a scenario where famous writers found themselves aboard a sinking hot air balloon; they then had two minutes to argue who should remain in the balloon and not be thrown out! The debate saw Shakespeare, Dickens, Roald Dahl, David Walliams, Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Suzanne Collins, Michael Morpurgo, C S Lewis and J K Rowling all crammed in and fighting for survival! (Someone did point out that David Walliams, as a swimmer of the English Channel, should be first out as he could easily swim to shore!) The eventual winner was Agatha Christie (a real RGS favourite according to book borrowing stats), who was championed by crime mystery fan Rory Guthrie. Well done, Rory!
The Library was even more buzzing than usual throughout the day. With a dedicated team of twenty pupil librarians, the Library was decorated with bunting and World Book Day displays. The pupil librarians especially enjoyed creating and decorating book-themed bunting, which looked fabulous. The librarians created a code-breaking activity which was a huge hit on the day and there were book quizzes galore. On World Book Day itself, the Library live streamed the Michael Morpurgo author event, which was very interesting and insightful. As a final surprise, there were books wrapped and hidden around the school in our Finders Keepers event! Some lucky pupils found and kept the brand-new books, and this certainly created a buzz around the school. There were many happy faces in the Library of the pupils who found them. The Library also welcomed a whopping 120 new books to the shelves during the week. These books have proved very popular with the pupils already; they made a huge contribution to the School’s culture of Reading for Pleasure, with a total 166 books issued during the week.
The whole day was tremendously good fun and there was participation across the School. Reading is truly thriving at RGS: there are more books being borrowed than ever before; the Library is one the of the busiest places in the School; Years Seven and Eight have read more books for The Lower School Reading Passport than any other Year group before them at a similar stage in the year; we have huge numbers of pupils attending Book Club and LitSoc. We love reading and can’t wait for World Book Day next year!
Nicholas Phillips, Head of English
