Grace brings books to life on World Book Day 2024!

World Book Day is a huge charity event which is celebrated across the world especially in schools and community groups. This year, as always, Grace Academy Solihull students and staff celebrated this special occasion. 

Each year we mark World Book Day at the academy with the aim to celebrate authors, books, illustrations and of course reading! Students took part in a number of reading related activities this year which included the Lanyard Hunt, the Quote Quest challenge and the Literary Tutor Quiz.

As a build up to the day, Drama teacher, Miss Duxbury organised for Big Brum Theatre company to perform the classical novel ‘Frankenstein’ for our year 7 and 8 students. Pupils and staff alike were thrilled to see this dark tale of Frankenstein and his monster come to life on stage! 

For the first time this year, we challenged students to decorate an egg of their favourite book character. They certainly rose to the challenge with magical Harry Potter characters to the classical Roald Dahl characters.   

We had over 60 students enter the Young National Writers’ competition this year and still counting! Their challenge was to write a horror story however only in 250 words! Winners will have their stories published and receive other top prizes later on this year, however some of Grace’s gruesome story winners were Lucia O’Brian, Taya Ellis, Alfie, Jessica Silaghi, Chloe Stone, Keira Lomax and Bradley Carter. 

World Book Day was also a perfect time to celebrate a local author, poet and musician Benjamin Zephaniah who sadly passed away last year. All Grace students took part in reading and discussing some of Zephaniah’s poetry, essays and extracts of some of his famous children and teenage novels.  Despite not being able to visit us, Zephaniah always took the effort and time to respond to our staff and students’ letters showing us what a fabulous human being he was.

Many of our students joined in with our Bookie Breakfast Club which included choosing and reading one of the free World Book Day books whilst sipping on some chocolate and tucking into some cookies and croissants! It was amazing to see our students taking part and discussing their favourite World Book Day books! Our year 8 paired readers enjoyed World Book Day activities helped by their post 16 mentors.

While our annual Book Market was once again a massive success! During break, students had the opportunity to visit the market and choose a free book to take away with them from a selection of books. Our street area was buzzing with students trying to find their favourite book. Over 500 students attended to collect their free World Book Day books, all of which were supplied with the help of The Works, in Chelmsley Wood!

It wasn’t only students taking part, staff dressed up as one of their favourite literary characters and as always made a huge effort!

If you would like to find out more about World Book Day and want to encourage your child to read for pleasure, please follow the link: https://www.worldbookday.com/ which includes recommended books and activities.