Westdale Junior School news

During our Bookweek at school this year, we had several authors come to visit us. Read about them and what they did for us below. We also had a theatre group present a play about Charles Dickens.

There were many other special activities in school that week, including a range of art and craft activities. Also, Year 3 and 4 had an opportunity to do some African dancing - you can read about this below too. Thank you to Mrs. Harrison for organising everything.

OUR DAY WITH ANDREW COLLET

Bookweek began on Monday with Andrew Collet doing an assembly where he told us some rhymes which were silly. He was on a stereo system so that the people at the back could hear him (how thoughtful) so when he talked it was amplified. The assembly was 10:30 till 11:30.

He gave the school a book - poems about teachers - and he visited the year 5 classes and helped us make poems that were called “If you’d be my friend I’d”. Then he helped us to make up bits to go after that. He also let the year 5 classes he worked with choose a book of his for the class to keep.

MICHAEL COX

Michael Cox came to Westdale Junior School on Wednesday and took an assembly for book week. He told us about lots of his books he wrote. Some of the books were horror stories, others included Awful Art, Elvis and his Pelvis, and Incredible Internet. He has written lots more.

After the assembly classes 6C, 5CB, 6J, 5PB had the chance to ask him questions and we could buy some of his books. He mostly talked about himself, telling us what he used to be. (He used to be a teacher.)

“WHAT THE DICKENS!”

On Friday 9th June 2006, S&P theatre group performed a play for the whole school called “What the Dickens!”. It was about a mouse, Arthur, and a crazy scientist who travelled back to Victorian times using their new experiment, a time machine.

It started off with a small mouse being transported back to the time of Charles dickens (around the time of Queen Victoria). When Arthur (the mouse) discovers the world of the famous author he becomes entranced and insists on seeing short snippets of many famous plays.

The actor playing Charles Dickens acted as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Christmas Present came to see him. He showed how Scrooge could be having fun at Christmas instead of being a mardy old man. The next visitor was The Ghost of Christmas Future. He showed Scrooge that people would hate him when he was dead. Scrooge realised that he had been evil and became kind.

After that, Charles became the man wearing a stripy costume in Great Expectations. The man in the stripy suit grabbed hold of Pip and ordered him to bring him food and drink. Pip did as he was told and brought him the things he needed. When he grew up, he received some money in an envelope from the man he did a favour for. One day, he and his friend Smike tried to run away from the place that they worked at. It was unsuccessful and they ended up getting into much trouble.

I thoroughly enjoyed the play and I think that everyone else did too. A pupil at Westdale Junior School said that the play was very entertaining and she would love to see it again.

ROB GEE’S VISIT DURING BOOK WEEK

Rob Gee visited our school to give a presentation of his performance poems.

His poems were fabulous! He puts actions to them and made them really humorous . In lesson time he taught us how to write a poem together called ‘How to make a best friend’. We all practiced and performed the poem and actions very well.

We found him very helpful and funny and we really enjoyed him teaching us. All in all we thought he was great and very talented and we all hope he could visit us again very soon.

AFRICAN DANCING

In Arts Week, Years 3 and 4 did African dancing with a lady called Bemma. She told us about African people who were shipped over to the Caribbean to be slaves. She said that the slaves lived in huts and were very jealous of their owners, who lived in big, posh mansions. So, on their one and only holiday, they made cardboard mansions and danced with them.

We did an African warm-up which was very funny and we were all laughing by the end. Then we started to do some Caribbean dancing. That had us all laughing too. It was great fun and afterwards we all were worn out!

Labels: 2006, arts week, report