World Book Day 2025 – Live Lesson

Join us for an exciting Live Lesson that will spark a love of reading in your pupils!

What is World Book Day?

World Book Day is a global celebration of books and reading. The Live Lesson for 7-11-year-olds is designed in partnership with World Book Day, to inspire reading for pleasure.

In 2025, World Book Day are encouraging children and young people to ‘Read Your Way’, and to have fun discovering reading on their own terms.

What happens in the World Book Day Live Lesson?

During the lesson, we build up to a special live moment—when children in schools across the UK read a book they love for 60 seconds, all at the same time.

Presenters Naomi Wilkinson and Joe Tasker will be on hand to encourage children to find books they love, with the help of former Children's Laureate, Joseph Coelho OBE. We also take a journey on The National Literacy Trust’s Bradford Stories Bus with Newsround’s Emma-Louise Amanshia, gathering book recommendations from local children.

Packed with book suggestions, curriculum-linked activities, and plenty of inspiration to help your pupils enjoy reading, this 30-minute Live Lesson is available to watch now on this page and on BBC iPlayer.

Curriculum links

• National Curriculum, England - Key Stage 2 - English
• National Curriculum, Northern Ireland - Key Stage 2 – Language and Literacy
• Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland - 1st and 2nd Level – Literacy and English
• Curriculum for Wales - Progression steps 2 and 3 – Languages, Literacy and Communication

Learning objectives

• Develop positive attitudes to reading and understanding of what they read.
• Extend the range of their reading and develop their own preferences.
• Enjoy reading and choosing books.
• Literature fires imagination and inspires creativity.

Teaching guide and activity sheets

These resources can be downloaded or printed to use alongside the Live Lesson.

How to get involved:

This programme was live and accompanied by a live website commentary feed for schools.

We added as many messages as we could to this live commentary page on the day of the Live Lesson.

Please do not send any more emails about this lesson, as they will not be included.

• World Book Day - educators hub
• National Literacy Trust - World Book Day resources

Where next?