Saturday 12th June

A second successful workshop, this time with a focus on literacy was held at The Blyth School Community College.

Thirty four Year 5 pupils from Horton Grange, Malvins Close, Morpeth Road, Croftway and Newsham Primary schools were invited to take part in the session.

Many of the pupils will join the college in 2011, in Year 7.  In an effort to develop lasting bonds, they were divided into teams made up of children from all the different schools, rather than being left to work only with children from their own schools.

This method helps to develop lasting friendship bonds between the children which helps them when they make the transition into the senior school and helps them to understand the benefits of team working.

Two workshops organised by Jayne Fitzsimmons, in her role as Transition Leader for the Blyth School, were delivered by members of staff from the college’s English Department.

The first workshop concentrated on popular fairy tales, with a particular focus on the relationships between the good and evil characters in the stories.  The children were first asked to look at the popular story of Shrek’, brought to life in recent years as an animation, which this year has seen the release of Shrek III.  This provided the children with initial inspiration, before they moved on to the more traditional stories which have been passed down through the generations.

The consistently popular author Roald Dahl was the focus of the second workshop and, in particular, Dahl’s ‘Revolting Rhymes’.  As will all of Dahl’s work, the text is brought to life for children by the distinctive writing illustrations from the pen of Quentin Blake, which feature and give delight to children and adults in all of Dahl’s books.

The children thoroughly enjoyed hearing about Dahl’s revolting recipes, including the one for ‘Frogscottle’ which features in another of Dahl’s works, ‘The BFG’ which features a big, friendly giant; a character who shares the books with a number of giants who prefer to eat children!

The children were encouraged to let their imagination run riot and to use the descriptive writing skills they have been taught to come up with their own revolting recipes.

Jayne Fitzsimmons said:

“We were all delighted with the way the children reacted to the workshops and to their visit to the college.  The workshops helped to bring literature alive and to stimulate their creative thinking skills.  We hope the children will continue to read during the summer holidays and many have said they are taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge, which they can sign up for here in our Open Learning Centre.  We are already planning ahead for next year and hope to invite the primary school children back into college over the course of next year to help them to feel that they are already part of the school when they join us next year”

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