World Book Day: Reading by numbers

Reading for pleasure is an indicator of a child’s future, even more so than family circumstances, parents’ educational background or parents’ income. In other words, regardless of where you are from or where you go to school, reading for pleasure is one way of promoting your future success. 

Did you know?

6 Reading six minutes a day can reduce your stress by 68%. Reading reduces your blood pressure and lowers your heart rate.

8 Children who have learnt to read by the age of 8 are less likely to end up in prison.

10 Just ten minutes’ of reading a day with children can make a difference to their academic achievement.

20 Learners who have as few as 20 books at home achieve three more years of schooling than those who don’t have books at home.

30 Reading 30 minutes or more a day will mean you will live 23 months longer than people who don’t

4,000 – 12,000 Children learn between 4, 000 and 12, 000 words a year through reading.

1.8 million By reading just 20 minutes a day, a person will read, on average, 1.8 million words a year.

World Book Day

To say that reading is an essential part of our everyday lives would be a massive understatement – or a catasterous disastrophe, as the BFG would probably say. The purpose of World Book Day is to foster a love of reading. Reading for pleasure is a pastime that is losing popularity among young people these days, and World Book Day wants to prevent that.

When is World Book Day?

Created by UNESCO in 1995 as a worldwide celebration of reading and books, World Book Day is celebrated in 100 countries around the world. Internationally, World Book Day is celebrated on April 23, but it’s celebrated on the first Thursday in March in the UK and Ireland.

Why the different dates?

In the UK, 23 April is St George’s Day. To avoid a clash, World Book Day was changed to the first Thursday in March.

How to celebrate World Book Day

Being a TEFL teacher, it’s natural for you to celebrate World Book Day in the classroom. While of course you should be promoting reading and reading for pleasure every day, set aside some time on this World Book Day to engage in activities related to reading.

And there are so many things you can do! 

Here are some of our favourite ideas:

• They say don’t judge a book by its cover but we think you can totally do that! Visit your local or school library and let your students choose a book to take out. They can compare their book covers and explain to their friends why they chose them.
• Watch the video of MC Grammar as he sings a song about World Book Day. See if your students can recognise the different books he talks about.
• Create a quiz for your students based on books, quotes and literary characters. Divide the class into teams and they can compete against each other for points.
• Let your students imagine what would happen if book characters featured in other books – a book mash-up, if you will. 
• Get your students to brainstorm different endings to popular stories.
• Have a Mad Hatter’s Tea party!
• Book speed dating. Every student brings in a book. In speed-dating style, students introduce their books to their partners in 1 minute. Once everyone has met all the different books, they can choose which book they would like to take home.
• Drop everything and read. At various times during the lesson, ring a bell. Everyone (you included) must stop what they are doing and read a book for 5 minutes. 
• Create 6-word stories.

By far the most popular activity for World Book Day is for students to come to school dressed as their favourite book character.

Book character ideas for World Book Day from some of our favourite books: 
Room on the broom
Mathilda
The Gruffalo
The Mr Men series
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Alice in Wonderland
Where’s Wally?
The Harry Potter series

But, of course, we should also incorporate reading into our everyday lessons. Here are a few of our most popular reading activities for you to use in your classroom:

• Teaching Young Learners Using Storytime
• Activities For Reading Lessons
• Top EFL Classroom Reading Activities

 If you’re out of ideas for what books you can use in your EFL classrooms, then check out these posts to help you out:

• 10 Diverse Children’s Books for the Classroom
• 5 Diverse Children’s Books for Older Students
• 5 English Novels to Recommend to Your Intermediate Learners

 As English teachers, you probably already have a passion for reading and literacy, and we hope that you are passing on that love to your learners. Hopefully we’ve given you some ideas to make incorporating reading into your lessons a little easier.

Happy World Book Day – and keep turning those pages!