Sunshine, Smiles and Dinosaurs

The big smiles on the faces of these lovely sisters sums up the wonderful afternoon I spent with Year Five at Mayfield Primary School in Cambridge today. The pupils were kind enough to help me out by being a practise audience so I could try out my Dinosaur Detectives talk, which I'll be giving at Wordfest and several other venues over the next few months.

What a wonderful attentive and enthusiastic audience they were too! And then we had great fun making up the names of new dinosaurs and writing poems about them - using a 'diamond' exercise that I borrowed from the inspirational Fourth Grade writing teacher Ed had when we lived in Oregon. It was part of his legendary project on The Painted Hills, and worked just as well for dinosaurs!

At the end of the afternoon, I sat outside in the sunshine and signed books. Children were queuing across the playground. It was heaven! Thank you very much to all the children and to your teachers too for inviting me into your school.