Tuesday July 16th 2024
Dear Diary,
Today’s visit was to Christ Church Primary in Cheltenham. It was another delightful day at yet another splendid school. And after the morning assembly, we somehow managed to squeeze five workshop sessions in before 3pm! Which meant I got to spend quality time with Year 1 & 2 pupils for a change, as well as all of KS2. Reading is clearly very high on the priority list at Christ Church, and the children’s extensive vocabularies were certainly put to good use during my workshops. Once again, Year 6 really surprised me – by being far more enthusiastic about the activities than I’d dared hope. And it was heartening to see how taken they were with the certificates I handed out for some super stories! (I think I’ll have to take some along on all my future school visits.) My narrator still seems to be going down well, due to the fact that he breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the reader throughout the story. And it’s reassuring to hear that he’s being well received, given that he’s here to stay and will be in all future books in the Words of WARNING series. It always tickles me when pupils replicate my writing style in their stories, adding their own unique twists. It’s very flattering, and shows how attentively they’ve been listening whilst I’ve read from the book. But I think I’ll be out of a job soon, as so many of the pupils were naturals when it came to storytelling. I hope they’ll continue to pursue their passion for creative writing going forwards. A lot of them asked if they were allowed to take their work home to finish it off. So, fingers crossed! Claire and the team were so warm and welcoming. And the pupils were fantastic – not just for joining in with vigour, but also for helping me cart my author trolley up and down all the stairs repeatedly! How many stairs?!? It will be strange over the summer holidays, with no school visits in the calendar. But I’ve thankfully got one more booked in before I switch back over to writing for a while. (I’ve really missed writing recently. But school visits are definitely a new-found passion of mine.)
