SURE AS EGGS IS EGGS! The Story of a School Visit

Ah well, Bank Holiday Monday’s over and done. My head and notebook are still full of everything I saw when I was visiting London last week. But that’s for another post..

Instead because the Big Back to School Week is almost here, I’m looking at diaries. So this post seems a good space to mention the good eggs.  

Eggs?

Yes, eggs!  Read on!

 I rarely write in detail about any schools I've visited as an author - for a mix of reasons - but I've decided I must use this resurrected blog to tell you about the good egg school, and how very pleased and hopeful that author visit made me! 

For a start, the school buzzed with busy, happy learning. It was a village school, tucked deep within the Yorkshire Moors. Sounds idyllic?  Yes, but rural schools can have their own particular problems. Village school children often return to isolated homes, where they spend long hours on video-games or in front of the tv or computer. A child’s only company may be their siblings. Busy working parents may not have time, travel-time or money for the range of outings possible in cities. Additionally, rural children may grow up meeting very few people outside their own small and remote community, yet that is unlikely to be where their twenty-first century life will lead them, or even their secondary school years.

Yet, because this particular school recognised the need for enrichment, for widening the children’s interests and experiences, they involved the children in music, art and craft. They brought in all sorts of speakers and activities. This school staff chose to give their children the real experiences – not just “interactive white-board experiences” - of the wider world. 

Each year, the children were taken to the theatre in the nearest seaside town and the oldest children went down to London by train for an overnight stay. The staff saw such outings as a way of developing the children’s future independence and knowledge.

During the school day, as I was rather busy, I didn't have much time for idle observation. However, I did see something I haven’t seen for years: school pets! Happy school pets. Those three guinea pigs were the most charming, socialised and well-cared-for pets I’ve ever met, totally comfortable in the children’s arms.. I think I heard rumours of giant snails elsewhere, but I didn’t go searching . . .

Now for the main thing! What I really want to mention was their whole-school initiative., known as "Forest School.” You can find out about it, in general, here at the The Forest School Association

Each term, every school year group makes visits to a designated wooded area nearby, and follows a seasonal programme. This was not just a lazy walk in the woods. During their primary years the children would be involved with such activities as:

Story-making

Constructing “fairy houses”.

Identifying natural materials

Story boarding using natural materials

Using natural materials to make art.

Tracking in small groups.

Studying the living creatures and animal inhabitants.
Constructing dens

Constructing experiments

Identifying plants and trees

Studying maps and landscape features

Cooking outdoors, from marshmallow kebabs to making and lighting fires.

Reading Books, both non-fiction and fiction, on related topics - from the Gruffalo to Stig of the Dump..

Record-keeping, as well as various forms of account and diary writing.
And real LOG BOOKS – made of split logs, string and laminated paper entries.

Wish I could have taken a picture.
And there was much more I didn’t have time to find out about. 
Think amplified Andy Goldsworthy with much much more attached!

What I particularly noticed was the effect on the children’s body language and behaviour. The children seemed friendly, confident and generally at ease within the school and classrooms. They did not seem to jostle for territorial space and for teacher’s attention. They did not “agg” each other. They did not seem full of stress..

When I commented on this, the teacher explained that the Forest School programme gave children opportunities to show and value a wide range of skills and abilities, far more than those required by a restricted classroom setting. I also felt, as the day went on, that the Forest School fitted in with the school’s whole philosophy of education.

Certainly, such stuff costs, so the school is constantly fund raising to help the pupils. I felt very honoured to be the chosen “author experience”, and hope the children and staff enjoyed the sessions as much as I did. It is also a brave stand at a time when many schools are cutting out anything but OFSTED requirements - yet this programme had been closely matched against those needs. Yes, it was a very very good day!

Over lunchtime, I watched the children playing in “their” field and clambering on the climbing frames. I was told about the school garden and observed the fat brown hens running about in their grassy pen. I must admit it was wonderful to be there, and I almost wished I wasn’t working just to spend more time observing and finding out about this hopeful style of education. 

However, teachers, school staff - and children - are all busy people and the day passed and as I left I was presented with a dozen eggs, laid by the school’s hens.

And over the next few days, as those twelve good eggs turned into an omelette and more, they reminded me of a really cheering day, one that I’m smiling about again right now.

Wishing you all a good September,

Best wishes

Penny

PS.. Rather sadly, I’ve heard of urban schools who might have been just as interested if their nearest woodland hadn’t been dangerously full of drug-taking detritus and similar health hazards. So very, very sad! Nevertheless, it’s good to share the happy stories too, despite everything.

HELLO AGAIN!

Yes, hello again! 

Now my holiday's over, I’ve checked my diary - and it's mid-August already. It's almost SEPTEMBER 2013, and the start of the new school year. 

Suddenly I feel a shudder of anticipation, a tingle of tension.

Suddenly I feel an odd need to rush out and find a new geometry set, one with all its plastic pieces and a working compass and a pencil with what seems like poor quality lead for drawing with, or so it seems.

 
  

Even though I haven’t used a geometry set for decades, and may not have been able to, even then.
 
The glorious end of August teases with its Bank Holiday weekend, but the days call for urgent positive action. Yes, come on, come on, you!  Hurry up! The lazy days are almost over!
 
This is a time to take stock, to get organised, to make plans for the year ahead.  The days grow bracing, invigorating and purposeful, and so on. If you let them.

I admit that I enjoy this fortnight almost as much as I enjoy January's New Year. It's a time for pretending that the purchase of new stationery will bring a whole personality change.A time for hoping that the emptying of cupboards and re-ordering of filing cabinets might bring a clear, creative, psychic space. These are days when one can half-believe in the resurrection of dreams and intentions. 

So, in this cheery postive spirit, I dared to glimpse at my long-ignored Penny Dolan Diary once again. Aaaagh! I saw a Silent Blog, an Unattended Page, the Very Ghost of a Social Presence. How had so much time passed?

If this was a real world diary, I could blow away dust and dried-up spider skins and maybe a crushed petal or two. But the blogosphere doesn’t carry such mementos, not yet. Yet the diary’s pages are opened, and here I am, staring at the blank screen again. 

I haven’t been totally idle, people. I’ve been busy with writerly projects and visiting various schools, from Stockton to Sussex. 

I’ve even spent time away in India, storytelling and talking about books at the wonderful Bookaroo Children’s Literature Festival in Delhi. 

I’ve been blogging elsewhere, too: posting on the History Girls blog, writing for An Awfully Big Blog Adventure.

 


I've been looking after the rota for Awfully Big Reviews, ABBA’s partner blog, and reviewing there, of course. Not totally silent, not quite.


But now I’m back here, standing in my uncomfortable new start-of-term shoes, with some hopes of getting the Penny Dolan's Diary rolling again, even if in a rather random way - so watch out for a few thoughts, grumblings and mumblings.

As a few good friends often say: "Onward!"

WORLD BOOK DAY GREETINGS!

I am currently rethinking this old blog of mine but will not bore you here. However, before the big and as yet unknown shift, I want to say hello to some of the lovely people and places visited over the last month and a bit.













So here – ta –da! - are the hugest of greetings to everyone at:

Armley Library!

Farley Junior School, Leeds!

Christ Church Primary School, Upper Armley, Leeds!

Waterloo Primary School, Pudsey!

Holy Trinity Primary School, Cookridge!

Barmby Moor Primary, Pocklington!

Bolton-on-Swale St Mary’s Primary School, Scorton, Richmond!

St Roberts Catholic Primary School, Harrogate!

St James Primary School, Allerton, Bradford!

I've had lots of nice World Book Day times and hope you all did too. Thank you for welcoming me, looking after me – and I hope you enjoy my books too.

Happy Reading!

www.pennydolan.com

Musing and Ranting: The Bright Light of Technology?

“Use Powerpoint!” That was what I’d heard from so many people: writers, teachers, artists and various publicity people.

So I set to work. I collected an interesting set of images to act as background to some of the moments in my book, A BOY CALLED M.O.U.S.E.

The set included photographs old and new, landscapes and people, coloured pictures and black & white drawings. A whole variety of visual images, in fact. I wanted to illustrate, through the range of source material, how many different moments can be gathered together to inspire a book and to show that these were mine.

When I talk about my book, I don’t – honestly! - just show the slides and drone on. And on. I stop to ask questions and involve the children. I narrate some parts of the novel and read short extracts most dramatically. If there’s time, I play a game or two. When the whole thing works clearly - and it has, it has - the sessions are very good.

However, when - once or twice - this hasn’t worked, the feeling of disappointment is for more than myself. I get cross too, especially as the “not-working” has never been because of a faulty memory stick or problems with the computer itself. It’s been a problem that I hadn’t expected, not in schools now, and it has inspired this rant: the quality of the available light

Travelling around, even with advance notice to the organisers, I have at times ended up with projector lamps and lenses so grimy with age that any subtle or complex images seem faint. How do the schools and the pupils manage, now that so much is done via the interactive white-board? Is this wealth creation for the opticians?

I an sure this is definitely not the bright white light of technology. It is the ageing, uncared-for end when the projector beam seems to be drenched with nicotine.

Not only but also there is the matter of the screens. How they vary! I have met vast wonderful double-screen systems as well as some opposites: a narrow section of grubby off-pink wall or a screen made up of paper taped together. And this is without any conflict caused by daylight streaming directly in to the space.

Get a mix of these factors – say, a dim light plus a tiny blemished screen and a large dining hall and the Powerpoint just doesn’t work. It is not wonderful. My carefully illustrative images end up too faded for the audience to see. This is not quite the cutting edge of modern technological provision I’d expected.

Add in another few crinkles in the circumstances. Now I once believed that the organisers know and understand the space they have given me, as the venue may not be free for me to enter until the last moment. This can be when the technology person rushes in to set things up and I glimpse something of what my audience will be facing on the “big” - not the laptop - screen. It can also be the moment when the eager audience is arriving and the point when the Show Must Go On.

When there’s clear, bright light projected and a good wide screen ahead, my collection of images works very well. When there isn’t, both heart and eyes fail.

I have had the wit, at such times, to revert to Plan B and step out of the Powerpoint. Yet it’s not always easy to slip in a flash of light from a talk with a fixed running order into the freer form of author talk.

But, unless those bright lights start shining, it’s back to my old, bold style of session I’m heading.

Greeting & Musing : A School A Shop and Alice.

Odd drive on Tuesday morning as something was wrong with the car - now happily sorted - but by heavens, not what you want in busy traffic on the way to a school ooking.

So thanks to everyone at Norton Primary School, Malton, North Yorkshire, for welcoming me and for making the day enjoyable after all, and to Mary Marlowe who arranged the day and let me tell stories o=in the lovely library too.

Lovely drive in the sunshine today to the Little Ripon Bookshop, collecting a box of books for an author event I'm organising and very much looking forward to: Emma Barnes talking about her book "How (Not) To Make Bad Children Good".

Also ended up collecting several lovely and longed for books for myself, including an "Alice" with Mervyn Peake's illustrations. Excuses? One: I don't like the nasty, dingy look of my own childhood copy. Two: I can't find the alternative: our copy of "The Annotated Alice". Three: It's the next but one title for my grown-up Book Group. But I just wanted the pictures really.

In fact, Lewis Carroll did lodge in Ripon for some of his life and enthusiasts have claimed that the twisting tunnel below Ripon Cathedral was the inspiration for that famous rabbit hole.

I now have a deep and mysterious hole in my bank account.

Greetings - And a Transformation Spell

Last week I had a most interesting Writing Day at East Ardsley Primary School, working on writing on the theme of Ancient Egypt. Many thanks to everyone involved, especially the children.

Here's something that Year 6 and I made, based on an Egyptian myth.

THE SPELL OF AMUN-RE
Spoken to transform the gentle Cow Goddess Hathor
into the Goddess Sekhmet the Lioness.

O GENTLE HATHOR!
May your soft breath steam with vengeance!
May your teeth turn sharp as spears!
May your tongue long for the taste of blood!

May your eyes blaze like rubies with rage!
May your paws lash like a crash of
thunder!
May your claws slash like swords in battle!
May your skin shine as bright as the burning sun!

May those who spy you approaching -
O GREAT SEKHMET!
Scream with FEAR! FEAR! FEAR!

www.pennydolan.com

Greetings - Travels South & North

Very happy to be at home at my desk this Sunday morning, catching up on some oddments of admin before going out to bring in the poor houseplants in case the frost arrives. (There's a nasty dark sky gathering out there, despite the sunshine.)
But before ticking off the last items on the list, I have some thanks to shout out about.

As I've been travelling between Wiltshire and Yorkshire, I've added two white horses, one for each county.

Distant "thank you!" waves to some lovely schools in Wiltshire: to PINEWOOD SCHOOL, Boughton; to ST. MICHAEL'S CofE PRIMARY SCHOOL, Aldbourne and to ST GABRIELS SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, Newbury. Thank you all for being such great audiences and listening to me chatting about my books. Extra special cheers for all the school ibrarians and to the wonderful people of ALDBOURNE CHILDREN'S BOOK GROUP who helped with the whole week, as well as to KAREN HELLEWELL for supplying my books for the book stalls. (I was able to sneak a happy day out to meet up with some writing friends too!)

This week was busy too, so author greetings to the Year 3 pupils and staff at EAST ARDSLEY PRIMARY SCHOOL, Leeds where we all had a brilliant STORYTELLING DAY with some African and Australian tales, and also to BRAEBURN JUNIOR SCHOOL, Eastfield, Scarborough - a bit of a dash through all the classes but I hope you all enjoyed the moment!