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If Usain Bolt had a pet? photograph from National Geograhic.com |
Norwich
is not that far from Cambridge. I allowed bags and bags of time. But I
almost didn't get there at all, due to massive three-way bust-up between
my satnav lady, the one-way system of central Norwich and minor
roadworks that closed a small but totally crucial road leading to the
school. After what seemed like weeks of driving in circles, I
finally screeched into the school car park and dashed into school only a
few minutes late (leaving satnav lady to have a nervous breakdown on
the dashboard.)
January was a busy month for school visits. My first visit of the year was the Angel Road Junior School in Norwich.
There's nothing like a calm and professional start to a school visit!
Luckily things improved dramatically from then on and I spent a great morning with Y5 classes talking all about story structure - including the importance of giving your characters obstacles to overcome in order to acheive their goals. The ideas the pupils came up with were a lot more fun and imaginative than having to navigate random road diversions to get to school on time! Being trapped in a giant automatic paintballing machine was just one of them. We came up with some great names for Usain Bolt's (hypothetical) pet cheetah along the way too!
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What could possibly go wrong? |
My visit was part of a special book week at Angel Road, and the next day the Y3 and 4 pupils worked with brilliant Norwich-based author, Benjamin Scott. You can read a report in The Norwich Evening News here (by the way, I don't live in Norwich, even though this article says that I do; I think the reporter must just have seen me driving round and round that one-way system for hours and assumed that I must live there!)
Thank you to everyone at Angel Road Junior School for making me welcome. It was an honour to be part of your book week. And a special extra thank you to the school secretary and caretaker who spotted I'd left my car lights on and organised a jump start to get the battery going again!