Salfords Primary adds extra volumes to World Book Day celebrations

​Pupils at Salfords Primary School in Redhill took World Book Day to a whole new level last week when they decided to spread out their celebrations of the worldwide literary festival over the course of an entire week.

​A huge variety of events took place at the school, including children creating their own picture books, different year groups reading to one another, book swaps and teachers being given free rein to share their own favourite stories with pupils, before the fun and games of World Book Day itself – with staff joining in the dressing up.

“I’m so glad we made a whole week of it because it was a huge success – the children absolutely loved it,” said Salfords Primary assistant head Gareth Parker.

“Doing it in such an inclusive fashion – with children being encouraged to read to one another, and teachers also swapping classes for reading sessions – made it so much more of a novelty, and that in turn meant they were really receptive to the message of encouraging a love of reading for pleasure and entertainment that we were trying to promote.”

Salfords’ Deputy Headteacher, and the school’s literacy coordinator, Charlotte Taylor echoed the sentiment.  “The children enjoyed all of the creative activities, especially working as a class to create a picture book, and having author Will Mabbett come to visit and talk about life as a writer fascinated them,” she said.

“We’ve had great feedback from parents too, so that makes us really enthusiastic about doing even more and making the celebrations even better in a year’s time.”

World Book Day itself was the high point of the week, with the wide variety of imaginative costumes on display showing how enthused pupils at the school, a member of the GLF Schools group, had become over the course of the week.

"The English Team deserve special praise for the huge amounts of work they put in to making the whole week such a success,” said Mr Parker. “The smiles on the faces of the  children and staff – and the positive comments we’ve had from parents – prove how worthwhile all that work was.”