Thursday 2nd March was World Book Day and we’ve been celebrating with quizzes, book recommendations and our DEAL event.

DEAL stands for Drop Everything and Listen and teachers and librarians joined in to read to their classes for 20 – 30 minutes at 11.30am. Although reading aloud to classes in primary schools is common, it happens much less at secondary level. This seems a shame so at the suggestion of Deputy Head Academic, Ben Evans, we set up DEAL which we initiated last year.

It’s an opportunity for teachers to choose an extract from a novel, a favourite poem or short story or a text relevant to their subject to share with their classes.

‘West with the night’ by Beryl Markham

I thoroughly enjoyed reading to a group of 10 3rd Formers. I gathered up the comfy seating in the library for an informal layout and launched into Beryl Markham’s account of her solo flight across the Atlantic to attempt to reach New York from England in 1936. To my relief they were rapt for what turned out to be 40 minutes of reading aloud and had numerous questions – How big was the plane? What did it look like? It prompted a really interesting conversation.

 

 

 

Our Head of Maths, Paul Cootes, remembered one of Isaac Asimov’s ‘I Robot’ short stories making a big impression on his when he was younger so he read that to his 3rd Form Maths class. They too were fully engrossed in listening to the story.

Here are some of the student and staff Favourite Books collected on our flipchart on World Book Day:

Looking at the titles fiction certainly wins the day!