Activities and events

Making a splash with Booked Up is an ideal opportunity to raise the profile of reading for pleasure in school. There are lots of fun activities that can involve the whole year group and staff to build excitement about the arrival of the books. Here are a few suggestions.

The warm-up: get inspired about books

Download our Thinking About Books sheet to start your students thinking about what sort of books they enjoy.

Do a Top Ten poll of favourite books before the books arrive. Then repeat this after Booked Up to see if any of them now make it into the top ten.

Ask children to draw or write about their favourite place to read.

Ask children to guess their teachers’ favourite books.

Do a ‘Get Caught Reading’ poster campaign with photos of teachers or pupils with a book, with some text on what they’re reading and why.

Hold a speed-dating session with books in the school or local library. Lay books out on tables. Each student gets two minutes with each book before moving on to the next one. At the end of the session, students fill in a tick box sheet indicating which book or books they would like to read.

Give students photocopies of book cover ‘blurbs’ from a selection of books in the library and ask them to design the cover for the blurb they are given – or give them the covers and ask them to make up the blurbs.

When the books arrive… throw a launch party!

When a new book is published, its publisher will usually hold a launch party for the author and everyone who has worked on it. Why not hold your own Booked Up launch party in the school library or in a classroom?

Guests

Invite the whole year group to create a real buzz.

Why not invite parents, local celebrities or an author to join in and hand out the books to students?

Decorations

Ask children to make posters about the books with information about the authors to put up on the walls.

Buy some balloons and write the names of each book on them.

Students could create a Booked Up banner to display.

Activities

Ask students to read out the first page from each book or describe why they chose their book.

Older students could talk about their experiences of Booked Up.

Launch your school swapbox so that the children can swap their books when they’ve finished reading them and remind them that they can borrow the others from their school or public library.

Read all about it!

Write a press release and send it to your local newspapers to tell them what you’re doing.

Reading Group

Why not encourage your students to read a few more of the Booked Up titles by starting a Booked Up reading group? To help you get started, download our six-week session plan, which includes printable activity sheets.

Swap it!

Create a swap box in your library to allow your students to swap their books once they have read them. Download our swap box sign.

Have their say

Encourage your students to write a review of their book on the Booked Up website. Whilst there they can also vote for their favourite and leave a message on the message board.

Win more books!

The Booked Up website has new competitions every week from September through to January. Let your students know that they can enter and they could get their hands on even more great books for free!