Hartshill Academy celebrated World Book Day on Thursday with an array of book-based activities, lessons and competitions, as well as the annual staff dress-up. Over 50 members of teaching and support staff dressed up as their favourite book character for the day, teaching lessons, supervising students and taking meetings. Special mention must go to Ms Hartman, who even went out on home visits dressed spectacularly as The Cat in the Hat! 
We had the Creative and Performance department all fiendishly evil as a wide range of villains; we had staff teaching outside in rather chilly roman centurion outfits, and staff inside in outrageously warm dressing gowns; we had more Harry Potter characters than we knew what to do with; we had modern heroes and 19th century heroines, WWII poets and Dickensian gentlemen; we had a Gangsta Granny and a London A-Z, two Disney princesses and Red Riding Hood’s wolf (complete with Grandma’s clothes); we had all seven of the Student Progress Coaches as the cast of Call the Midwife; and we even had one vice-principal as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!
The students had a fantastic day, working out the ‘Treasure Hunt’ sheet, matching clues such as “Never named in the book or film, she is one of many children on a very special night-time trip to see Santa”, to a list of characters, in this case ‘Girl (Polar Express)’ and then dashing around school to find the staff member dressed in that outfit (Miss K in pyjamas with a golden train ticket).
Unfortunately, due to staff absence, we are going to ask students to hold on to the Treasure Hunt sheets, as well as their voting slips for the best staff costume, and the Cryptic Book Quiz sheets. We will extend the deadline for these until Monday 14th March. Please do keep them safe until then!
Three other competitions are still open – the writing competition (please see your English teacher for details), the Book Cover competition and the Design a Book Token competition. If you have not already taken the sheets for these, information will be released separately both online and via form tutors, and will also be available from Miss K in the library next week.
As part of the World Book Day celebrations, a £1 book token will also be handed out by your form tutor next week. They can be used to buy any of the titles mentioned on the back of the token for FREE, OR they can be used as £1 off any book worth £2.99 or more. Please also look out for the competition on the token – you can win a family trip to London, including a visit to the Harry Potter studio and tickets to The Cursed Child!
Thanks to all involved in making the day a success, we can only hope the students had as much fun as the staff did!
