World Book Day 2022

World Book Day is one of our most exciting days of the year! The World Book Day mission is to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own.

Reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success – more than their family circumstances, their parents’ educational background or their income. World Book Day, as an organisation, wants to see more children with a life-long habit of reading for pleasure and the improved life chances this brings them.

World Book Day was created by UNESCO on 23rd April 1995 as a worldwide celebration of books and reading. It is marked in over 100 countries around the globe - including right here in Tanzania!

World Book Day is an absolute hive of activity in BISA, with both school campuses coming together for book-based fun and games. From our littlest learners right through to the Senior Leadership Team, everyone got into the spirit of things by dressing up as their favourite book character - Hungry Caterpillars, Wimpy Kid, Paddington Bear, Mary Poppins, Robin Hood, Enormous Crocodiles, The Snail and The Whale, Handa, and even a Suffragette, the costumes were incredible!

The love of reading was clear as children enthusiastically talked about which character they were and retold their favourite book. They took part in many activities together as they shared their stories with each other.

Our EYFS and Primary students took part in a competition to create a door display based on a book that they loved and, boy, did they deliver! After some intense judging by a panel of parents and teachers, the eventual winners were...

Reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success – more than their family circumstances, their parents’ educational background or their income. Key outcomes are listed below.

• Improvement in vocabulary in comparison to non-readers (Millenium Cohort Study)
  • Correlation between regularity of reading for pleasure and ability in reading each reinforcing the other as students get older (Cremin 2019, Torppa 2020)
  • Better performance in subjects other than English (Millenium Cohort Study)
  • Reading for pleasure is one of the most important predictors of test scores at age 16, regardless of background (OECD)
  • There is a strong correlation between regular reading for Pleasure and Mental Wellbeing which is separate from other predictors (NLT 2018)
  • Reading improves a child’s empathy skills (Oatly 2016)
  • Interventions developing Reading for Pleasure attitudes (offering book choice and time to read rather than instruction) have a greater influence on reading ability than reading lessons for older children/adults (Greenberg 2014)