World Book Day is a celebration of reading, storytelling, and creativity celebrated by schools across the UK every year! On March 6th 2025 your school is likely holding an event to celebrate learning and reading. Across the UK children will be dressing up as their favourite characters, holding book-themed bake sales to raise money for their library, or coming together for quiet reading time, sharing stories, or more boisterous performances and songs.
Instilling a love for reading in children from an early age is important for their imaginations, creativity, and socialisation. But how can schools build a space to encourage reading? We are here to guide you through just some of the ways your school can inspire your students to enjoy reading.
Brand New World Book Day 2025 Reading Area Competition
Benefits of Reading
Before we start, it is important to consider just why independent reading and storytelling are so important. Children in early years education may just be learning how to read for the first time. Therefore, nurturing their literacy skills and inspiring a passion for storytelling will set them up for their educational futures.
Children benefit from reading for enjoyment in more ways than simply basic literacy education in early life. These benefits include:
- Improving language skills.
- Expanding vocabulary.
- More complex cognitive development.
- Increasing attention spans
- Learning about the world around them.
- Developing social skills.
- Improving emotional awareness.
- Just plain fun!
By encouraging reading and allowing children room to explore and expand their own literary horizons as they grow, schools are setting students up to become active and engaged adult readers. Schools should provide space for creative education in addition to in-classroom learning. Often the best space for this kind of learning is outside, on the school playground.
Communal Storytelling Spaces
A storytelling area can be a space for students to come together, learn, and explore their imaginations through reading. By setting up a dedicated space for reading on the playground, schools provide a new and unique environment suited perfectly for any reading and storytelling activity.
As with any form of outdoor learning, bringing reading to the playground is an effective method to motivate students because the fresh air and new environment improve attention spans and energy levels. Making regular use of outdoor storytelling areas in lesson time and encouraging children to spend break times reading turns learning into a daily activity that students engage in more regularly.
All the best playground spaces are flexible, accommodating a range of activities. Therefore, we design outdoor reading areas for both formal outdoor teaching and for small groups of students to sit together and share their favourite stories. This is made even easier with portable seating that children can rearrange into circles, small groups, or in a semi-circle around a central storytelling chair for a teacher or peer to lead the reading activity.
With soft grass carpets and a range of wooden outdoor seating including storytelling chairs and grass-topped seating cubes, schools can create a comfortable communal reading area for all students. This outdoor furniture makes your storytelling area fully customisable, versatile. Therefore, schools can create a reading space suitable for any size playground without seating getting in the way of play.
Activities around Storytelling
We all know how much energy children have, so quiet, independent reading may not be the best option at all times. For children to fully explore socialisation, self-expression, and creativity you should consider different forms of activity that add to the experience of reading.
As such, here at some activities that take a slightly different approach for a louder, more active World Book Day. Teachers can lead these activities during outdoor lessons, or children can explore in their break times.
Illustrating Stories
Creativity and illustration are often also important aspects of enjoying books and reading- especially for younger learners. This is why we include whiteboard and chalkboard panels in our big storytelling area bundle. Exploring art as a form of storytelling and sharing illustrations and drawings with friends on the big whiteboard is great to help students develop confidence and creativity.
Drawing out imagery from stories as they read can help children understand and remember key elements of the narrative. This is also beneficial when introducing classic stories and books from the English learning curriculum, explaining more complex concepts with illustrations, and mapping out plots with colour and imagination.
Word Games Round the Circle
Fun games and activities help improve engagement with the reading material in lessons. With all of our storytelling furniture being fully portable, arranging classes into a circle or semi-circle is simple. This allows teachers to lead activities and quiz students, but also enables more effective sharing among peer groups, going around the circle to share thoughts and opinions.
Word games also help young children to expand their vocabularies and engage in creativity. For example, by going around a circle, each adding one word, groups of children can create their own narratives, working together to complete a story that is completely their own.
Acting out Favourite Stories
World Book Day doesn’t just include books, we shouldn’t forget to appreciate plays too! Acting out scenes from Shakespeare or reading out dialogue from classic novels is fun for children regardless of age. Performance in a safe, supportive environment can have a great impact on children’s confidence by helping shy students come out of their shells and express themselves.
As a collaborative form of creativity, acting needs a dedicated space that is large enough for multiple children. The School Playground Company provides bespoke play stages for playgrounds where students can come together to stage plays or simply have fun.
Celebrate World Book Day with The School Playground Company!
Does your school need to add features for reading to its playground? Check out the freestanding storytelling and reading equipment in our shop to find your options. Plus don’t forget to sign up for our 2025 World Book Day Reading Area Competition for your chance to win a new reading area for Free!
