Every year, schools across Australia celebrate book week. Most schools celebrate with a book parade, where students come dressed as their favourite book character. Children are bursting with excitement, eager to see what their friends look like and of course, what do their teachers look like? It is a childhood memory that most Australian children will always remember.
But, apart from the book character parade, how else can you utilise this excitement in the classroom environment? We have put together some fun, quick and easy ideas that you could use in your classroom during book week.
Character Bag
Create a ‘character bag’. Students are given a small paper bag and access to the art table. They are to create a picture of their character on the outside of the bag. This is to show what the character looks like on the outside. Then, they use bits of paper to write words that describe what their character is like on the inside. What is the character’s personality like? These words are put inside the paper bag. You could create a cute display with all the students’ character bags.
Funny Stories
Display the Fairy Tale Story Prompt posters. In pairs, students complete a story map template using their book week characters and one of the fairy tale settings. A fun, yet effective reminder of the different elements of a story. Students love using their characters in stories.
Who Am I? Paper Plate Puppet
Provide students with a paper plate and a large paddle pop stick. They create their character’s face on the paper plate to make a puppet. This can be the end of the activity and they could use the puppets to create a puppet show in small groups.
Alternatively, have the students write a ‘who am I?’ to stick on the back of their puppet. Students then place their puppet face down on the carpet and begin to walk around the classroom. When the teacher says ‘stop’, students need to stop where they are and pick up the closest puppet. They must not look at the front of the puppet yet, they read the ‘who am I?” and need to work out what character they have picked up.
Comprehension Task Cards
It is always handy to have students bring along the story book their favourite character is in. It’s a great way to use a story the children know really well to practice some comprehension strategies. Using our comprehension task cards, pick out suitable questions and provide students with one question each. They then need to use their book to answer the question.
Literature Tasks
Pick appropriate tasks out of our 30 Literature task cards. Allow students to pick what task they are going to complete using their book week character and story.
We hope this blog has given you some inspiration for celebrating book week and dress up day with your class. Here is a little ‘treat for the staff’ idea. Why not have a book week morning tea…
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