Thursday 7 March was world Book Day and Highfields once again celebrated the day with a host of activities for lower school to get involved with. While there was a change from the usual celebrations, as there was no dressing up this year, there was still a lot on offer.

Lower school spent form time designing their favourite book characters, year 7 on bookmarks to keep and year 8 in their WBD activity booklets.

The book swap was a resounding success for the third year in a row, with students given the chance to swap their preloved books for ones donated by others.

This year the Maths and Science LRC was host to a book themed activity table, including wordsearches, colouring pages and the library research challenge.

Twenty brave staff members volunteered to be hunted by students by wearing lanyards featuring library book covers, with students challenged to find out which staff members were wearing each book. Some staff even said they felt like celebrities as they were swarmed by students asking for their information!

There were also many avid Wally Watchers in school, who spent the day hunting for 15 Wally’s that had gotten into the building and hidden themselves around the corridors and LRCs!

World Book Day also saw the launch of the year 7 Readathon. Students in year 7 are encouraged to read as much as possible in two weeks in order to raise money for the charity Read for Good, who pay for books and storytellers for children in hospitals.

“The students always get a lot of enjoyment out of World Book Day, and this year was no different. It was great to see so many getting involved in the scavenger hunts around school during break time, and to hear the discussions at the book swap about which books were best! I hope the students enjoyed designing their favourite book characters in form and that they make the most of their book tokens.” -Miss Hallam, Highfields school librarian.

“As always, World Book Day was a great occasion for our students to celebrate their love of reading and all things book related. Having the literary lanyards was a brilliant idea of Ms Hallam’s and many staff found themselves being followed down corridors by eager students desperate to identify staff and record their answers for the quiz. The library was positively buzzing at break and lunchtime and it is always a joy to see our students so enthusiastic about literature. We are very much looking forward to supporting the Readathon sponsorship in English lessons and I feel very positive that we will be able to make a real contribution to this excellent charity.’ -Miss Hannon, Head of Communications.

The deadline for the Readathon is Thursday 21 March. Anyone who would like to sponsor a year 7 can make their donation at https://readforgood.org/

Details on where to spend book tokens can be found at https://www.worldbookday.com/books-and-tokens/books/participating-retailers/