World Book Day at Cuddington Croft

Pupils at Cuddington Croft Primary School in Cheam spent a day being someone else last week as the school took part in the international celebrations of World Book Day.

​The scheme, to encourage an interest in the written word for education and entertainment, is enjoyed with particular enthusiasm by schoolchildren, who have an opportunity to dress up as their favourite fictional characters on the day, and Cuddington’s pupils entered into the spirit with a display of imaginative costumes.

“World Book Day is a brilliant concept because it gets across a hugely important educational message in such a light-hearted, enjoyable way,” said Cudddington’s reading leader Craig Miller, who organised the day.

“Just by picking a character from a book as their costume, that encourages children to look at the books on their shelves and think about them in a way they might not usually, which opens up their minds, and all the associated activities really build on that.”

Celebratory events at Cuddington, which is a member of the GLF Schools group, included special story writing projects, children from different year groups reading to one another, teachers sharing their own personal choice of stories with the children, and also a book sale to raise money for the school.

“World Book Day is something everyone at the school looks forward to,” said Mr Miller. “The children enjoy the fun aspect of it, and for us as educators, it’s an opportunity to be really imaginative and creative about how we structure lessons and educational activities. The most important thing, though, is that it gets everyone talking and thinking about books, which means it’s more likely that people will read them – and that can only be a good thing.”