Author Visits - December 2018

Who says children don’t read anymore?  Happily, that’s certainly not the case at Calthrope Park School!  Our students have been fortunate to have visits from two well-known, award-winning authors this term.

Ali Sparkes

Ali Sparkes, winner of the Blue Peter Book of the Year for her book, Frozen in Time, visited Book Group on Monday, 3rd December to tell us how she had always been terrible at English whilst at school and was actually a wannabe actress!  Luckily for us, that didn’t work out and she became a journalist, before going on to become a successful writer of books for teenagers and young people.  Her talents as a stand-up comedian were put to good use, however, as she treated us to a highly interactive and entertaining talk, which ended with lots of us having stomach-ache from laughing so much and a long queue of very eager students, wanting to buy a signed copy of one of her books.

Alan Gibbons

The following day our Year 7s were visited by Alan Gibbons, author of more than 70 books for children and young people.  Another thwarted comedian, Alan had them roaring with laughter, as he told them about his journey to becoming a writer and fielded questions from highly enthusiastic students.  As a result, there was yet another huge queue of students snaking round the Library at break time, all wanting to buy a signed book.  Following on from that, Alan worked with Year 7 on improving their creative writing.  Several students have commented on how much they enjoyed his visit and how impressed they were at their ability to write so much, and so well!

Summer Reading Challenge Presentations

For the second year running we set our prospective Year 7 students (along with our existing students, of course!) the challenge of reading between one and nine books over the summer holidays – with the incentive of certificates, badges and achievement points as their reward for working in their free time.  We were delighted to find that many of them took us up on it this year; participating student numbers increased from 34 last year to 120 this summer!  To celebrate this success, we invited author Julie Sykes into school to present the certificates and badges, alongside Mr Amos and one of our school governors.

Well done to all students who took part and K-EEEE-P READING!