Ball skills demo by Katie Nutter
Just back from a fantastic day with the staff and Year Six pupils at Whitechapel Middle School in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire. The headmaster, Mr Drapan, wanted a full-on day of writing based on a football theme and guess what… he got one! We kicked off in assembly with pupils reading extracts from my Girls FC series, an ex-pupil who plays for Leeds Carnegie Ladies Reserves demonstrated her ball skills and I did a short introduction to the background to the books. Mr Drapan himself read an extract from ‘What’s Ukrainian for Football.’ He read it beautifully – and far better than I could have. Partly that was because he’s an experienced head who has been reading extracts in assemblies for decades but it’s also because Mr Drapan’s parents were from the Ukraine and the story is extra special to him. In fact, he helped me with my research!
After assembly Y6 returned to the hall and we looked at developing characters in stories. The pupils had to make up a ‘Star Player’ for a team just like in my books, giving their character a name, position, likes, dislikes and so on. Before we had time to draw breath it was back to classrooms in English groups and on to the writing tasks. Each group chose something different – designing a cover, writing an introduction to a new Girls FC book, composing a match report, coming up with an original storyline. It was brilliant to see how engaged everyone was in the tasks. I came away with half a dozen new ideas I’d pinched… I mean, borrowed…
Lunchtime was equally as hectic with just enough time to eat my meatballs and pasta before signing books and postcards. After that, i visited two more groups and finally we gathered in the hall where shining examples of work were read out. Thank you to everyone for making the day such a blast.
Mr Drapan reads from What's Ukrainian for Football?
Whitechapel Middle's awesome readers prepare...
'How do you spell Shevchenko?'
