World Book Day & Festival of Reading

This week, Drapers' Academy have been celebrating all thinks literacy, as part of the Drapers' Multi-Academy Trust Festival of Reading, and in celebration of World Book Day 2024!

Author Visits

Last Friday, we welcomed the entertaining Neal Zetter to run workshops with our Year 7 pupils.

Neal is a London-based comedy performance poet, author, entertainer and educator with a huge following in schools. He has been using his interactive, fun and accessible poetry to develop literacy, confidence and communication skills in 3-103 year olds for nearly 30 years.

His hilarious poetry books cover all ages of children and have won him awards and recognition from e.g. Wishing Shelf Awards, Book Trust, The Reading Agency etc.  Neal makes language accessible for the least engaged and stretches the most able.

Neal worked with our Year 7 pupils about the importance of confidence in communication, through poetry and performance.

We then welcomed author Nicholas Kasparis, a local author from Clayhall in Essex, to run sessions with our SEND pupils.

Nicholas has been a teacher for over 20 years and in that time he has taught every age group at Primary and Secondary school, from 4-year olds to 18-year olds, so he was very much at home as he ran workshops with the pupils, focusing on his book Ralph and Robort.

Book Race

This half term, pupils have been taking part in a 'Book Race' to read and review as many books as they can.

The lead has been constantly changing over the past two weeks, however, there could be only one winner. Congratulations to Megan in Year 10, who took 1st place, just pipping Andrea to 2nd and Esther to 3rd. A huge congratulations to all pupils who took part.

Book and Cake

On Wednesday lunchtime we held a special "Book and Cake" session, encouraging pupils to spend their break reading in the library... with a complimentary slice of cake! The students loved it and there was a fantastic atmosphere as everyone enjoyed their time reading and socialising with their peers.

Additional Events

On World Book Day itself, staff dressed up as their favourite book characters.

We also ran a ‘Shelfie Selfie’ contest, with staff taking photos of their bookshelves at home, for pupils to try and identify who they belong to!

Finally, we held two special ‘Book Grab’ sessions after school, at which pupils could help themselves to free books. An opportunity for everyone to pick up a book to take home and keep, donated by our school library.