World Book Day 2026
Thursday 5th March 2026.
Who’s reading what??
Who are these mystery teachers reading their books. Keep an eye out around school as well for 5 bonus entries!!
Dear parents/carers,
Are you a cunning Cruella, a gentle Gruffalo or a friendly Frodo?
Thursday March 5th 2026 is World Book Day and we’re excited to celebrate the joy of reading with everyone! Here, at Forge, we will be hosting a week of activities which will help us celebrate the joy and magic of reading. During the course of the week we will have children’s book author Ben Davis visiting, ‘Who’s Reading What?’ Challenge as well as puzzles and competitions running the library!
We wanted to give you advanced notice for one event as, this year, we’re inviting all staff and students to join in the fun by dressing up. On Thursday 5th March we invite all students and staff to dress up as their favourite book character. Whether it’s a beloved hero, a magical creature, or a memorable villain, we encourage creativity and imagination as we celebrate the wonderful world of literature.
Whether it’s from a beloved children’s book, a classic novel, or a character that has inspired you, we encourage you to get creative and show your love for literature. Feel free to go all out with costumes or just wear a themed accessory if you prefer!
Guidelines for Dressing Up:
• Choose any character from a book you love—this can be from any genre or age group!
• Costumes should be simple and fun, reflecting the character’s essence (no need for expensive outfits).
• You may choose to wear a simple accessory to represent your character if you prefer. Alice’s headband? The BFG’s ears?
• Students are welcome to bring in a short summary or quote from the book they chose to share with their classmates or even a copy of the book itself.
• Please ensure that costumes are appropriate for a school setting and respectful of others. Costumes should be comfortable and should not expose excessive skin. We want everyone to feel confident and have fun while maintaining a positive and inclusive environment.
• Students who do not wish to wear any form of costume must wear full school uniform as normal.
• PE lessons will run as normal so please ensure you are able to change in and out of your costume easily if you have PE on the day.
• There will be prizes for the most imaginative costumes as well as the most original characters.
Your teachers will be dressing up too – hopefully you will be able to talk to them about their favourite characters and what books inspire them.
This is a wonderful opportunity to spark conversations about the books and characters that inspire us. We hope that this event will foster a love of reading and inspire students to explore new stories.
We look forward to seeing all the creative costumes and celebrating the power of books together!
Many thanks
Mrs Cunningham-Smith
Take a look at what we got up to last year!
2025 – Biscuits and Books
We have had a wonderful week with students and staff enjoying time reading in the reading corner. We relaxed, put our feet up and allowed ourselves to escape for an hour from the busy school week with our favourite book, drink and a chocolate biscuit (or two).
Lessons have been adapted all week to include reading related activities.
We have had Harry Potter data collections in maths, literary inspired music lessons, guess the AI poem in science, redesign the book cover in Art and many more. Teachers have really thought carefully about inspiring students to engage with reading all week and we have had lots of fun at the same time.
Over half term we ran a ‘re-design the book cover’ competition.
Mrs Hanif was inundated with entries and we have been so impressed by the talent of our Forge students. Runners up won a giant chocolate bar and the winner won an AMAZON voucher and giant chocolate bar.
On World Book day staff and students wowed us with their book inspired costumes.
We were joined by Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, witches and wizards, Harry Potter, Matilda, The Trunchbull, Medusa, The Cat in the Hat, The Mad Hatter, Mary Poppins, superheroes and many, many more. We want to thank all our staff, students and families for supporting us with this fun event and enabling Forge to come together through the magic of books.
Staff costumes were judged by some very hard to impress year 10 students in the morning and prizes awarded. Mr Grummett (The White Rabbit) won the most entertaining costume award and our very own Dr Mason won the award for the costume most reflecting the personality of the teacher: The Queen of Hearts.
Mrs Cunningham-Smith had the pleasure of awarding lots of prizes to students who had made a special effort with their costumes. In particular, we wanted to reward those students who had really thought about the essence of their character and made a unique interpretation of the character. Students received amazon vouchers, certificates and sweet treats at the end of the day.
Mary Poppins made her way around the academy and offered a spoon full of sugar to all staff throughout the day to thank them for their support and efforts in making the day so special for our students.
We had an exciting Treasure Hunt at lunchtime which saw over 200 students engage with maths, DT, science and business activities leading them to the final reward in the library. A special thanks to Mrs Hanif and Mrs Miles for organising this and to the staff who offered to run the activities.
Year 11 House competition Tug of War
The Year 11 students were invited to play for their House today in their last house event of the year.
With the theme of World Book day the book called “TUG OF WAR” – In order to win their respect, turtle challenged both elephant and hippopotamus to a tug-of-war. While each one thought they were playing against turtle and were amazed by his strength, turtle had tricked them into playing tug-of-war against each other.
The results were, Snowdon 1st, Bredon and Malvern joint 2nd, Clent 4th.
What a wonderful week – time to start planning for next year!
Mrs Cunningham-Smith
