World Book Week

World Book Week at St Peter’s 

This year, we at St Peter’s decided to ‘Go All In!’ to celebrate the 2026 National Year of Reading. There was a fantastic array of reading for pleasure activities on offer throughout the week - from competitions, to author events, informal book talk in tutor time and assembly, a reading river and dressing up - and we’re really proud of the way our students engaged with these opportunities.  

Many staff and students embraced the selfie frame in the library to show off their World Book day themed outfits or favourite books. 

Lots of students cleverly designed and crafted very thoughtful and creative cakes to represent a book of their choice. Congratulations to Luke and Jonah in year 7 who won best design and Dominik in year 7 who won the most difficult cake to bake. Guest judge, Toby May, was extremely impressed with all the entries. 

The mystery staff reading challenge led to some funny guesses as to who was in each picture hiding behind a book. Congratulations to the tutor group 4HBB who correctly guessed 10/12 answers and Emilia in year 8 who was a close second with 9/12. 

The standard of competition was extremely high for the writing challenge (re-write the ending of a novel). Judges praised many of the students’ ability to write emotional, engaging endings for their novels with very tense climatic moments and satisfying resolutions in a sophisticated writing style. It was a difficult decision, but congratulations to Isla in year 9 for her winning entry and Ted in year 7 who was a very close runner up. 

Isla Year 9 - Winning Entry

Key Stage 3 students were lucky enough to gather together and listen to the hilarious author, Nathaneal Lessore, who had us all laughing loudly with his cringeworthy tales of embarrassing incidents! Nathaneal reminded students that they are all fascinating and everyone has an interesting story to tell. Thanks to Nathaneal, many of us left the event feeling inspired to write our own stories and eagerly anticipating his next novel, which will be released in May. 

Throughout the day on Thursday, teachers across all subjects read a couple of chapters of Skandar and the Secret Element aloud to their classes each lesson, meaning that years 7 and 8 read a whole story across the course of the day. Teachers also read extracts to GCSE students at the start of their lessons. The books were selected from the 2026 Staff YA Reading Challenge, all of which are available for students to borrow from the library should they wish to read more. 

As part of our strategy to encourage students to recognise each other as readers and to engage in informal book talk, some staff members shared their favourite book in the library each lunch time. Staff and students were also invited to dress up as their favourite character from a book or to dress in the colours of the cover of a book. This led to some very imaginative outfits and a brilliant opportunity to celebrate our diverse range of reading preferences. 

Thank you to the adults who supported students with their creative endeavours. Hopefully you weren’t racing around to gather costumes and cake ingredients last minute!

Please keep an eye out for more exciting reading for pleasure activities happening at school in the near future, like Waterstones recent visit on Friday 13th March, providing a brilliant opportunity for our students to purchase news books at a discounted rate.