World Book Day 2020

Posted at 10:53 am on 19th March, 2020

Inspiring Readers and Writers at Wellacre

Thursday 5th March was World Book Day, the annual event to promote a love of reading and writing. 

Wellacre supported the event with inspirational activities both in English and Literacy lessons, as well as asking for support from the school community. 

Key Stage 3 classes completed a Creative Writing exercise - the 500 word story challenge!

Classes learned about The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a 1984 picture book by the American author Chris Van Allsburg. It consists of a series of images, ostensibly created by Harris Burdick, a man who has mysteriously disappeared.

Each image is accompanied by a title and a single line of text, which encourage readers to create their own stories. Many famous writers have tried to put their own twists on the pictures and Wellacre students were challenged to use these images as inspiration for their story from ‘The Uninvited Guest’ to ‘Mr Linden’s Library.’

We are pleased to report the following winners:

Connor, Year 7, wrote a great piece about a monster coming through a portal to eat a group of unfortunate builders

Thomas, Year 7, 500 fantastic words on a mysterious visitor

Nicholas, Year 8, combined the idea of a creepy book with a potential librarian serial killer.

Finley, Year 9, wrote a lovely tale of a boy befriending a rat only to have the said rat bring along 150 of his rat friends to tea!

Key Stage 4 classes studied autobiographical writing in lessons, discussing the form of prose used to share the story of an individual from Anne Frank to Muhammed Ali.  They used this style of writing to envisage their long term vision for their own ‘story’ and how they hope to fulfil this dream for the future. 

We also enlisted the help of staff, students and their families to enable us to ‘Share a Million Stories’ at Wellacre.  We asked for donations of unwanted books for the school library and any students bringing in books were placed in a raffle with a chance to win a prize.  Congratulations to Year 10, Edward, who was our prize draw winner. 

Mr Chisnall, Director of English and Whole School Literacy, said:

“World Book Day was a great celebration of literacy at Wellacre.  We had a fantastic response for the 500 word challenge and it was a pleasure to select our winners.  

“Thanks also to the tremendous number of donations of books for the library - we have collected almost 150 so far, with a huge mix of fiction and reference books.”