In this guide

The purpose and history of International Literacy Day
Fun literacy activities to try in the classroom
Reading challenges, books swaps, and storytelling events
Creative language activities and writing prompts for all levels
Ideas for school-wide or community-based literacy celebrations

The purpose and history of International Literacy Day

International Literacy Day began in 1967 and is observed on September 8th each year.

The purpose of International Literacy Day is to raise global literacy awareness for literacy and literacy related activities. It is a day to remind everyone, but especially those who make important decisions like policy-makers and leaders, about the importance of literacy in society.

International Literacy Day was started by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The purpose of UNESCO is to promote peace and collaboration among nations. Their Sustainable Development Goals include a quality education for all people.

Each year, International Literacy Day is centered around a theme. For example, this year (2025) the theme is “Promoting literacy in the digital era”. The celebration will focus on how the digital world has impacted literacy and ways that the two can coexist. To honor this year’s theme, I have included a few activities and prompts that incorporate the digital world into literacy.

Promoting literacy skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – through activities and celebrations can be a fun and educational way to celebrate literacy and its importance in the lives of all people.

This article gives examples of classroom and school-wide literacy celebration ideas. I have also included a few writing prompts for multiple grade levels. I hope these ideas inspire teachers to foster literacy development not just on International Literacy Day, but everyday!

Fun literacy activities to try in the classroom

Use these activities to observe International Literacy Day in the classroom. They can be modified to work in most classroom environments.

1) Read more posters

Students create posters that encourage others to read more. These can be physical or digital.

Physical posters can be hung around the school or community.
Digital posters can be posted on the school website or school social media platforms.

This activity allows students to practice their persuasive writing. You could also incorporate advertising and how advertisers appeal to their audiences.

Students should consider how their words and visuals impact the message they are trying to convey.

2) Literary conversation bookmarks

Including opportunities for students to discuss and converse is important for developing academic language. Sometimes, however, students do not know how to have conversations about literature. Conversation bookmarks are a great way to scaffold and give students support to help them have academic conversations.

Create bookmarks that include literary discussion questions. Students can use these bookmarks while reading, participating in small group discussions about literature, and in book clubs.

For additional scaffolds, include sentence stems for conversation on the bookmarks.

Discussion question examples:

What characteristics of genre can be found in this text?
What choices did the character(s) make that changed the story?
What connections can you make between the text and your own life?
What part of the text did you enjoy the most?
What was the most important event in the text?
What would you change about the ending?

Sentence stem examples:

In paragraph ____, it states _____.
The character’s actions show that __________.
The most important event in the text is _______ because ______.
In the text __________ is an example of a genre characteristic.
One conflict in the story is _________.
_______ (character name) changes in the story when _________.

3) Author study choice boards

An illustration of a sheet with a table, and open book, and a magnifying glass.

Give students the opportunity to choose an activity to learn more about an author. Students will develop research skills, and they will have the opportunity to be creative.

Ideas for author choice board:

Produce a skit inspired by an author’s life.
Create a mock podcast interview with an author with at least 8 questions and answers.
Choose two works by an author to compare and contrast.
Write a letter to an author (living or dead).

The letter does not have to be sent, but gives students the opportunity to practice writing a formal letter.

Make a presentation about an author – digital slides, a timeline with pictures and significant dates, an oral presentation as the author, etc. Be creative!
Design a book cover for one of the author’s books or for a biography about the author.

4) Write a class story

Write a class story as a class.

Using large chart paper, allow students to choose a subject and to contribute to telling the story.

Similar to improv, each student takes up the story where the student before them leaves off.

Allow each student to add to the story and take turns recording their sentences.

Once the story is complete, show students how to revise and edit a story.

Complete the revising and editing steps together as a class.

5) Silent conversation

This activity would be most appropriate for students that have the ability to write in complete sentences with relatively little support. However, scaffolds such as sentence stems could be used to help students that need a little support.

Divide students into partners.

Give each set of partners a picture.

Students use the picture and a piece of paper to have a silent, written conversation about the picture. They can describe what is happening, ask questions, and give opinions on the subject of the picture.

Students are to then make up a story about the picture.

After writing, allow students time to discuss their writing and the picture. They should consider how their interpretations of the picture were similar and different. They can reflect on how not speaking impacted the way they communicated.

Reading challenges, books swaps, and storytelling events

Reading challenges, book swaps, and storytelling events are common ways of celebrating International Literacy Day. These activities can be fun and engaging ways to incorporate and encourage literacy.

Reading challenges ideas

Timed reading challenges like reading for 15 minutes a day or for the first 10 minutes of each class.
Literacy bingo is a fun and engaging way to encourage literacy. Include reading different genres, reading to someone, reading in different locations (outside, in the classroom), and other ways students can participate in literacy.
Hold a friendly competition between classes to see which class can read the most books in a given time frame (month, grading period).
Create a wall of fame with word counts, or books read, for students as they complete books.

Book swap ideas

Do a classroom library swap where classes exchange books, or students visit other classrooms to choose books.
A reading partner book swap can be fun too. Students exchange books with a reading partner and then get back together to share what they read.
Blind date books! This is a fun idea that the librarian at the high school I teach at has done where she wraps books in brown paper and writes simple clues to their contents on the outside. Students choose a book from the library to read based on the clues.

Storytelling event ideas

Invite published authors to speak to students.

Many communities have authors that live nearby. However, if this is not feasible, explore online options for learning about and interacting with authors.

Several years ago, I participated in a super fun storytelling event. I was an instructional specialist and worked at the district office. One of the schools where I often worked invited people from across the school, district, and community (the assistant superintendent, instructional specialists, police officers, community leaders, firefighters, local healthcare workers, etc.) to come and read to students.

I chose Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak because it was one of my favorites as a kid. I even made a Max costume and brought my Wild Thing stuffed animal. The students loved the experience and had a fun day.

Combine career day and literacy by inviting individuals to come and share with students about their jobs and how literacy is a part of the skills needed for their position.
Have a stuffed animal/toy reading day where students bring a stuffed animal or other toy. Set aside time for them to read to their special guests and don’t forget to take lots of photos!

Creative language activities and writing prompts for all levels

Literacy skills are important regardless of students’ grade level. I have divided this section according to elementary, middle, or high school. Many of the activities can be modified to be appropriate for other levels.

Elementary language activities

1) Memory rhymes

Developing an understanding of rhyming words helps students to recognize language patterns. Many children’s books contain rhyming words.

Poetry is also a good resource for rhyming words, especially poetry for younger students.

Directions:

Divide students into small groups or partners.
Students create rhyming word card sets using notecards.
As a group, students play memory with their cards face down.
When a student makes a match, they must say a sentence that uses the rhyming words appropriately.
The person with the most matches at the end of the round wins.

2) How-to writing

Explaining how to do something helps students to take on the role of teacher.

They can write a how-to for making their favorite food, how-to use an app on a phone, or how-to dribble a soccer ball. The possibilities are only limited by students’ imaginations!

To add to this activity, students can create a how-to video to demonstrate the skill they are teaching.

Elementary writing prompts

As a class, create a collaborative list of 50 reasons why literacy is important.
Choose a story and change the ending.
Go for a walk or use a nature video and students write what they experience using their senses.

Give students bonus points for using onomatopoeia, imagery, and other types of figurative language correctly.

1) Punctuation practice

Punctuation can change the meaning behind a conversation. In today’s world of texting, punctuation is often forgotten.

In this exercise, students practice using punctuation and delve into how punctuation can impact meaning.

Directions:

Divide students into small groups or partners.
Give students 5-6 sentences without punctuation.
As a group, students discuss and rewrite the sentences with what they determine to be the correct punctuation.
Groups trade sentences. Students change the punctuation in the new sentences.
Share the sentences with the whole class and discuss how punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence.

2) Parts of speech bingo

Directions:

Create bingo cards with parts of speech – verbs, nouns, prepositions, adjectives, etc.
While reading independently or as a whole group, students mark off on their card when they encounter one of the parts of speech. They must also write down the example they find and the page number or paragraph number.
The first student with bingo wins.

Middle school writing prompts

1) Still life story

Display several everyday objects and ask students to write a story using at least three of them.

2) Create a fill in the blank in the style of Mad Libs

This website can help students to generate examples to share with each other or students can create their own.

This helps students to practice using various parts of speech and storytelling techniques.

3) Write a text exchange (at least 10 lines) between characters in a book

Include at least two characters or even a group chat.

High school language activities

1) Financial literacy activities

An illustration of a piggy bank, a pen, coins, calculator, credit card, paper-clipped sheets, calendar, pie chart and combination chart.

Financial literacy and personal finance are necessary skill sets. Do some of these activities to increase high school students’ awareness of how finances operate.

Save for a goal

Students set a personal financial goal and then calculate how much they need to save per month and how long until they can reach their goal.

Credit cards

Show students an example of a credit card statement and they must identify interest rates, minimum payments, and balance.
Challenge students to determine how long and how much it will cost to only make the minimum payments.

Wants vs. needs

Give students, or have them create, a list of possible monthly expenditures.
In small groups, or individually, they must sort those into wants versus needs and justify their answers.

Scam or not?

Show students examples of phishing emails, get rich quick advertisements, and fake job offers.
Discuss how to identify these types of false advertisements and how to avoid being scammed.

2) Media literacy activities

Along with financial literacy, media literacy is also a top necessary skill set.

Help students to learn to identify bias and false information in the media.

Analysis of these concepts can help to increase students’ critical thinking skills.

High school writing prompts

How are informational and narrative writing similar and different?
Use an image and write a mock Instagram post about that image.
How has the creation of the internet benefited literacy? How has it hurt literacy?

After students give their researched opinion, hold a deb a te.

Ideas for school-wide or community-based literacy celebrations

1) Book drive

Hold a book drive and donate books to a shelter, a children’s hospital, a juvenile detention center, or an assisted living facility.

2) Community book challenge

Challenge the community to increase literacy.

Hold a community reading day in a local park.
Encourage businesses to display small posters advertising what they are reading.
Invite community members (with appropriate background checks) to volunteer to read to students.

3) Theme day

Read a book as a school and host a theme day.

On this day students participate in crafts and activities centered around the theme.

If the book has a movie version, watch the movie and compare it to the book.

4) Literacy scavenger hunt

Create a school-wide scavenger hunt with prizes.

Students can:

Unscramble the title of a well-known book,
Answer questions about a character,
Solve literacy based puzzles and riddles, and
Spot a teacher reading.

There are endless possibilities for students to complete a scavenger hunt.

Literacy is a vital part of the lives of all people. International Literacy Day is a time to encourage literacy and educate students and the community on the importance of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Sources:

Pekkolay, S. (2022). ‘The Importance of Literacy’, Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, doi: https://doi.org/10.36347/sjahss.2022.v10i01.002
International Literacy Day 8 September (2025). Available at: https://www.unesco.org/en/days/literacy (Accessed: 15 June 2025).

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