Book Week is a magical time of the year that brings stories to life and ignites a passion for reading in students of all ages.
It’s a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the joy of books and the adventures they offer.
When celebrating book week, the key is to create experiences that not only captivate your students’ imaginations but also foster a deeper love for reading (a teacher’s life work!) beyond the yearly ‘dress-up’ event.
The activities we suggest in today’s post can be used during Book Week or to support any other lesson based on reading or reviewing books. These tasks are designed to encourage students to share the books they have enjoyed with their classmates, consider the benefits of reading, and view reading as a form of valuable entertainment.
Let’s Get into it with 8 Book Week Activity Ideas
Play Book Detectives
We love doing this activity in the school library but your class library will also work.
Students need to look for and find books that fit into certain categories, eg: A book with an interesting cover, a book about friendship, a book that teaches the reader something, a fairytale, etc
This fun activity will get students exploring different books they might not normally be drawn to and will also start conversations between peers about books—it sounds like a teacher’s dream.
Find Book Detectives for Grades K-2 here.
Find Book Detectives for Grades 3-6 here.
Create Book Covers
One day, when organising snacks for my kids, I got inspired by the boxes! Ask students to collect food packaging such as cereal boxes, boxes from snack food etc. Take them apart to their net form (a great integration with learning about 3D objects and their nets in real life), cut off the edges and you have yourself a book template.
Students can then use the recycled boxes to create book covers and blurbs. It might be:
- A book they recommend
- A favourite family book
- One of the shortlisted books
- Redesigning a book cover of a book you have read together in class
Watch this idea in action here.
Reading Emojis
Tap into the concept that books can make us feel lots of different emotions. Ask students to think about books they have read and how they made them feel, then record these feelings and draw an emoji to match.
This could be a continuous activity that you complete as you read particular books as a class, or students could complete it based on the books they have recently read.
To follow up this activity, allow students to share and talk about the books they have read and how they made them feel. 
Find Reading Emojis for Grades K-2 here.
Find Reading Emojis for Grades 3-6 here.
Class Reading Challenge
Dedicate the week to completing a reading challenge as a class. We like this activity because it not only exposes students to different books, countries, and continents but also builds class community.
The idea is to choose a book from every continent to read together as a class. You might like to locate the continents on a world map or even plot little images of the book covers on a world map. This activity really opens itself up to student-led, inquiry-based learning!
One Sentence Book Review
While the students are writing a book review, this task is intended to help them work on their summarising skills.
You could use this activity to quickly and succinctly review each of the year’s shortlisted picture books or as a supplement resource for the books your students are reading with you during reading groups.
It is a short task that is ideal to build upon outside of book week (side note: it is also perfect for those reluctant writers in your classroom).
Host a Book Tasting
We have seen extravagant versions of this concept on social media in recent years, but it can also be really simple!
Give the students the template, The Best Book I Have Read All Year, to complete (you may want to invite them to bring in a copy of the book too). Once they have completed their recommendation, give students time to walk around and explore their peers’ book suggestions. 
Explore the Authors Behind the Stories
Often, the authors have fascinating stories themselves. Older students, in particular, enjoy learning about the humans behind the book. Book Week is the perfect time to explore authors and illustrators. This task also allows student voice and choice in the type of authors they research.
Shortlisted Books x Maths Lesson
We at Rainbow Sky Creations are all about integration. During Book Week, explore and read the shortlisted picture books with your students.
Once you have read each book, ask the students to vote on their favourite story. Then, collect the data as a class and create a graph to show it.
It would be fun to share graphs with other classes in the school if they do the same task. 
Find Shortlisted Book Graphing for Grades K-2 here.
Find Shortlisted Book Graphing for Grades 3-6 here.
Bonus Idea:
We also have a fun Where’s Wally game you can play with your class or school. Read about it and get the free templates here.
Book Week is a fun time of year and the perfect opportunity to create an unforgettable celebration filled with literary magic! We hope your students enjoy these activities!
Find all activities mentioned in this post for Grades K-2 here.
Find all activities mentioned in this post for Grades 3-6 here.
What to read next:
Easy Book Week costumes for Teachers
Ways to Recycle your Where’s Wally Costume
How Teachers are like Cheerleaders
