To celebrate World Book Day, this week children have had the opportunity to watch author-illustratotrs and poets at work, and put questions to them to be answered.
All of Key Stage 2 were able to see Michael Rosen (or Raisin as we now know him) on Wednesday morning, who entertained us with some of his best loved performance poetry, showing how much fun it is to play with language, rhythmn and rhyme.
On Wednesday afternoon, Upper Key Stage 2 were inspired by Kwame Alexander, an award-winning poet, who read us his very moving book, The Undefeated. His advice to improve your writing? “Read, read and then read.”
Here’s a few of the children’s thoughts from Year 5 on Michael and Kwame…
I thought that the authors were very inspirational and wrote some very good poems and stories; they were remarkable!
I think that they were really funny and they made me want to write more poems.
I liked the sessions, and I really want to have more. They inspired me!
On Friday morning, children from Years 2 -4 were able to see award-winning author-illustrator and environmemtalist, Neal Layton. He wowed us with a live illustration reading us Stanley’s Stick He then talked to us about trees and how important they are to us, and we saw his sketch books that he used to create The Tree which only has 40 words!
On Friday afternoon, children from Key Stage got to see author illustrator Jo Empson, take part in a live draw along, and see her read her brand new story – it isn’t publishing until January next year! How lucky we are!
This is what the children thought, and created from Friday’s events.
Neal is very good at drawing and I like that he likes nature.
We enjoyed Jo Emspon. We both tried to draw the lion.
If you missed an author for your year group, don’t worry, you can watch again using the links below.
Jo Empson for Years 1 and 2: https://youtu.be/tKQ0aQHQmwI
Neal Layton for Years 2, 3 and 4: https://youtu.be/dnHZCkaju-w
Michael Rosen for Years 3, 4, 5 and 6: https://youtu.be/lu5GDOYqorc
Kwame Alexander for Years 5 and 6: https://youtu.be/y3t5YMdV4NY