A WEE COUNTY secondary school celebrated Book Week Scotland in their usual colourful way last Friday.

Alva Academy has marked the event in a big way over the past three years and each year staff have tried to involve more and more of the young people.

This year, the whole school dressed up as characters from their favourite books, including teachers and departments coming as full casts, such as the PE department dressing as St Trinian’s.

Heather Ainslie, the acting head of English, told the Advertiser how committed the school is to promoting literacy.

She said: “Our staff across the school are hugely committed to promoting literacy and this week had planned for fun literacy activities, as well as share their own love of reading by asking classes to 'Drop Everything and Read' throughout the week.

“This year we hosted the first Alva reading café which allowed our S1-2 pupils to enjoy reading for pleasure in the company of staff and S6 pupils.

"Pupils across all year groups participated in a Guess the Book quiz which involved staff reading sections of some famous novels over our school tannoy.”

The week was rounded off with the dress up day which brought the school to life and Heather said it couldn’t have gone better.

She continued: “The grand finale of the week was our literary themed dress up day and coffee morning, where pupils and staff across the school came dressed as characters from some of their favourite books.

“The English faculty transformed the library into a fairy tale kingdom and as always, staff put a huge amount of effort into their costumes, making the coffee morning a great success.

“Pupils in our senior English classes came dressed as characters from the literature they have been studying, and this year we extended the invite to dress up to junior pupils who were super excited to be involved.”

Best dressed pupil prizes were awarded to Aimee Kay (S6), Amy Andrews (S1) and Kasey Hunter (S1).

The best senior class came as a variety of characters from their class novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the best faculty prize went to technical who transformed their department into the world of Harry Potter with the head of department, Mr McGinlay, playing the part of Voldemort.