St Francis School flying high following World Book Day Award win

16 March 2018

St Francis RC Primary School is celebrating their Gold Medal win for their space themed World Book Day Award display.

Staff and pupils were presented with their prize, £5000 worth of books, by the World Book Day Award judging panel made up of Olympic champion and author Sir Chris Hoy, award-winning author Joanna Nadin, illustrator Clare Elsom.

In collaboration with the Flying Fergus series by Sir Chris Hoy, Joanna Nadin and Clare Elsom; World Book Day and National Book Tokens offer schools the chance of winning up to £5000 worth of books by putting together a display based on that year’s theme.

This year, the theme was ‘flying high with reading’ and St Francis’ went out of this world for their winning display.

This display not only celebrates the pupils’ love of books, but encourages them read more. St Francis pupils use ‘space passports’ to travel to different ‘reading planets’ which each represent a different genre.

The centrepiece of the display is a rocket decorated with the ‘superstars’ who help pupils with their reading outside school. Inside the rocket, there is a television that plays book reviews that pupils have recorded to encourage their classmates to pick up a book they wouldn’t normally read.

Nanaba, Junior, Deborah and Angel in Year 6 said: “As soon as we heard that the title of the competition was ‘flying high with reading’, we immediately started to think about what it meant. Books encourage your imagination to take flight; the books we read assist us to fly high into our own world of novels, to become writers and to use our ideas and imagination to create our own stories. Reading helps us shoot for the stars! This is when we realised we should choose a space theme.”

Cllr Victoria Mills, Cabinet Member for Children and Schools, said: “Congratulations to everyone at St Francis, you should all feel incredibly proud of yourselves! This is an incredible achievement that demonstrates the whole school’s commitment to reading and literacy. This is a very creative display that literally goes ‘above and beyond’. Have fun choosing your new books!”

Sir Chris Hoy, Jo Nadin and Clare, the team behind children’s book Flying Fergus, said: “We were all so impressed by the entry from St Francis RC Primary and their interpretation of ‘flying high with reading’. St Francis RC Primary took the theme and blasted off, bringing the world of stories into outer space. As authors we see stories as portals to reach the wilds of our imagination, and this was reflected in their no-limits, whole-school effort, which catered for all reading abilities and ages with unique displays and spectacular inspired details, including space passports and reading planets – truly out of this world.”

Claire Gillespie, assistant headteacher and Kate Finbow, reading co-ordinator at St Francis St Francis RC Primary School said on their win: "We are delighted to have been awarded first prize for our entry to the World Book Day Award. When we began working on our entry, our main aim was to unite the school and celebrate our love of reading. We really wanted to create an exciting experience for our children, to challenge them to read more and from a broader range of books. Winning first prize is beyond our wildest imagination and we are overjoyed. The £5,000 prize will have such a tremendous impact on our children; we will be able to purchase so many books and strengthen our commitment into making our children life-long readers and lovers of books."

Page last updated: 16 March 2018