As World Book Day approaches, we reached out to the exceptional school librarian, Lucas Maxwell, seeking his insights on engaging ideas for your libraries to actively involve students.
World Book Day can be a fun, exciting event for a school. It can also be stressful to plan. In my experience, the programmes that have been the most popular are the ones where students get to create, compete and express themselves.
I am going to highlight some of our most popular programmes that perhaps aren’t on the traditional list of World Book Day activities. I hope that your students find them fun and interesting.
Book Basketball Deathmatch
How it works:
I put the students into teams of five. Each team starts with 10 points on the board, which are represented by “X’s.”
I ask each team a multiple choice question on a book, they have 10 seconds to answer it.
If they get it correct, they get to remove 2 X’s from an opposing team’s board, or 1 X from two different teams, whichever combination they prefer.
In addition, a team that answers their question correctly get to elect one of their teammates to take a shot at the Nerf basketball hoop we have set up.
They get one shot, if they sink it, they get to remove 4 additional X’s from the board.
If a team answers incorrectly, another team can steal, which allows them to remove 1 X from the board as long as they answer it within five seconds.
When a team loses all of their X’s, they were out of the game. As you can imagine, it gets very competitive, with teams trying very hard to knock each other out.
Throughout the game I’m doing mini book-talks and reviews related to the questions, it’s a very effective way to introduce the students to new books.
Comic Book Bookmarks:
This is a very easy programme that I was able to do using donated comic books from our local comic book shop.
Items you’ll need for this activity are:
Comic books
hole punch
coloured string
pens or markers
scissors
a pre-existing bookmark to use as a guide
Adhesive cardstock
Step 1: Place your pre-existing bookmark over the page you’d like to use for your bookmark, trace around it and cut it out.
Step 2: Take the section you’ve cut out and stick it to adhesive cardstock.
Step 3: Cut out around the bookmark, hole punch in the middle to tie your tassel on and boom! You’ve got a cool looking bookmark!
Shiritori
This is a game we often play in manga club but it can be adapted to anything.
You have a group of students sitting in a circle, the more the merrier.
One student says a word, what the word is depends on you as the librarian as you need to give them a guide. The guide could be simply “name a graphic novel”.
In this case, let’s say the student says “New Kid” as their graphic novel. You now move down the line, the next student must think of a graphic novel that starts with the letter “D” because “New Kid” ends with “D”.
If they can’t think of a title, they are out! You can make it easier by allowing them to think of a character’s name from a graphic novel or you can choose any rule you’d like to apply.
You continue going around the circle until there is only one person left standing!
Dungeons and Dragons
I think every school should be running a Dungeons and Dragons club and World Book Day is amazing way to not only highlight your fantasy collection but to bring in a large number of new and familiar faces to the library.
My recommendation is to try what is known as a one-shot – an adventure that can be completed in an hour or two. This would be best done after school or during a special event like our Saturday DungeonCon.
There are several ways to run this programme, I have a free, step by step adventure that you are welcome to use. No experience is necessary as it explains everything.
Items you’ll need for this are:
A set of D&D dice
pencils
paper
D&D character sheets, which can be found online.
I hope these activities are useful in creating a series of World Book Day activities that are fun for everyone!
You can find more brilliant insights from Lucas on his blog https://glenthornelrc.blogspot.com/ and his twitter feed https://twitter.com/lucasjmaxwell.