World Book Day 2021

For World Book Day this year, activities took place across multiple departments, to celebrate and encourage our pupils to incorporate reading into their daily lives. Everyone could get involved by identifying the teachers behind the books in the Caught Reading competition and they could also enter the Literary Bake Off! 

The English Department welcomed World Book Day author Jess French to speak during their Year 10 class. Jess spoke about her exciting adventures along the way as a zoologist, veterinarian, TV presenter and author. Our students also got an insight into the world of publishing and our aspiring writers were given some inspiring ideas to use in their work. 

Historians read about the long-term flaws in the July Monarchy of the 1830s and 1840s in France, the attitude towards ethnic minorities in the USSR of Joseph Stalin, and the Wars of the Roses. Despite being at home, students were able to speak about the importance of reading to the historian’s craft.
Year 11 were treated to the opening of Nobel writer Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel ‘Klara and the Sun’ which led to some interesting discussions ahead of Science Week about AI. Mrs Retter has been reading ‘The Landlady’ by Roald Dahl with her ESL classes.
In Agriculture lessons, Mr Beales’s class read a variety of literary articles related to their livestock unit and then looked at extracts from Animal Farm. It was great for them to read together and discuss the author and the book as a commentary on communism.

In Mandarin, Mrs Greenfield’s class have been inspired by The Monkey King, a legendary mythic figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel ‘Journey to the West.’ The pupils were lucky enough to also watch a short animation from the iconic Shanghai Animation Film Studio which has been recently restored for UK audiences.