*Free* World Book Day Lesson Plan to Introduce Classic Texts to Your Class
Every good teacher’s worst nightmare is the groan around the class when you say that the Literacy lesson is starting. The pupils don’t know that you hate teaching subordinating conjunctions as much as they hate learning about them; it’s difficult not to get bogged down with the ‘SPaG’ elements of the curriculum (like, did I use that semi-colon correctly?)
But relief is on the horizon! The DfE’s recent publication The Writing Framework July 2025 highlights the vital importance of speaking and listening in the classroom – they state what all quality teachers already knew: that children cannot write ‘it’ if they can’t speak ‘it’, making speaking and listening lessons a key part of their education.
[…] Talk is essential for building pupils’ understanding of written language
The value of talk to children’s mastery of language is as important for writing as it is for reading
The EEF also backs this with evidence from their ‘Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2' report
Speaking and listening are at the heart of all language development. They are foundational for reading and writing, whilst proving essential for thinking and communication.
Ofsted’s most recent English subject report ‘Telling The Story’ 2024 drills into this ethos even more.
Pupils’ knowledge of language, gained from stories, plays, poetry, non-fiction and textbooks, will support their increasing fluency as readers, their facility as writers and their comprehension.
And in case you needed even more persuading of how vital talk, drama and performance are to our pupils’ literacy, the National Curriculum itself states:
All pupils should be enabled to participate in and gain knowledge, skills and understanding associated with the artistic practice of drama. Pupils should be able to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances.
Drama, when approached in an engaging and meaningful way, is the ideal hook to introduce your pupils to aspirational texts. My Year 4 class in 2021 could recite key characters and moments from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’ (not the Disney version, the actual original book) due to accessing the scripts and songs from The School Musical’s Company’s child-friendly adaptation. My Year 6 class in 2025 were quoting Dickens and learned about the perils of being an orphan in Victorian London by rehearsing and performing scenes from ‘Oliver With A Twist'.
The School Musicals Company provide completely free, child-friendly script samples of adaptations of high-quality, classic texts; all of which could be incorporated into your teaching. With World Book Day coming up, why not use one of your Literacy lessons to experiment with this approach to ambitious texts and see how it goes? You can create an engaging World Book Day lesson plan for the students to enjoy.
Engaging World Book Day Lesson Plan
Below is a lesson plan that could be applied to any of the script-samples provided. This World Book Day lesson would work for upper key stage 2 or Year 7 pupils to introduce an ambitious, high-quality text to your classroom, no matter the age or ability:
- Start off with a quick warm-up that introduces the speaking and performance elements of the lesson (you want to ease in all children, including the ones who feel dread when they hear the word ‘drama’). Here’s an example: put a basic sentence on the board, then call out different emotions/adjectives and have the children say the sentence with the different emotions applied. E.g. ‘Where are we going?’ Excited, anxious, sinister, bored, curious. Remember, the learning objective for this lesson is to access and explore some classic stories, NOT to be the best actor in the room.
- Take a minute or two to glean what the children already know about the chosen text, then give them a SWIFT overview so they can perform during the lesson with some context. Don't get bogged down in teacher talk - you want to give them lots of time to explore the text themselves. Scene context is provided at the top of each script sample to make this even easier for you.
- Model it yourself! Show them the script; be sure to point out stage directions, as this will be a new concept to some children. Then have a go at performing the first few lines yourself – your class seeing you acting in front of an audience (thinking about voice, body language, expression etc.) will support all of the learners to have a try on their own, and they're less likely to sound like they're just 'reading aloud', which can be a tendency when doing any script work for the first time.
- Get the children into groups and let them get started! Give AMPLE time for them to explore the script. It's tempting to pop a ten-minute timer on the board and then make children perform. But if you really want them to get to know a text, ask questions about it, talk about it and experiment with it, you have to give them the time to do so. Structure the time given by pausing all groups and getting feedback throughout with 'pit stops', but try not to disrupt creative flow too much. Questions for pit-stops could be: how would you deliver this character’s line? Why do you think the character would respond like that? What would the other characters be doing while this is happening and why?
- Adapt: put less confident readers with supportive pupils and spend some time performing their lines with them, so they get the gist of it. Any particularly nervous child could be the 'director' - this gives them the chance to understand the scene and focus on the action without the crippling anxiety. Remember, this lesson is about exploring a script and a high-quality story, not about dramatic performance. Stretch your more confident performers and readers to consider the 'back story' of the character; this may impact their delivery and performance choices and will encourage them to think more deeply about the text.
- Allow groups to perform for each other. No huge audience, no whole class staring at them. Just one group performing to another group with minimal pressure.
- Time at the end might allow groups to perform for the class if they want to. Forcing children to do so may backfire and put them off the text or drama.
This could be a stand-alone lesson, an introduction to a new text for Reading lessons or the hook for a new writing unit. You can build on this even further in subsequent lessons by having children write a narrative version of the scene they've come to know so well. You'll be impressed with the writing they produce: they'll have taken in far more of the vocabulary and style than even they'll have realised!
Emily Martin is a Year 6 teacher, English lead and one of our playwrights here at The School Musicals Company. She has an NPQ in Leading Literacy and directs Year 6 productions.