Tuesday March 11th 2025
Dear Diary,
It was back to Norton Primary for today’s #FreeSchoolVisit, where I saw some very familiar faces – including that of lovely Eleanor, who’d impressed me with her story about an Awesome Auntie last year! I’m still tweaking my new assembly for WARNING: May Contain Dragons a little, having only delivered it once prior to today, but I’m pleased to say that (after a quick check) it turned out no one was sitting on my missing dragon. Thank goodness! The workshops that followed all went swimmingly, with my new activities seeming to go down rather well, and Year 6 kicked the day off. There were lots of stories written under the title ‘Dragon Farts vs Zombie Farts’, which were both brilliant AND awful (thanks to all the disgusting farts). But I was really enamoured with Grace’s witty diary entry about her teacher being a dragon. Grace has such a way with words and an incredible imagination. (I think I spot a future author!!!) Year 5 was next, and Xander’s poem about the dragon hiding under his bed was so good that he ended up going home with a toy dragon as a prize today! Here’s the first verse:
My dragon has a habit of sleeping under my bed.
It’s quite a bad habit, it has to be said.
When my dragon’s comfy, its scales turn red.
And, yes, there IS a dragon hidden under my bed…
Year 4 was up after lunch, and with their tummies full and their batteries fully charged, they romped through the activities in no time! Eleanor shone just like last year, by putting so much detail into her account of how dragons make friends. And Mikayla and Jemima produced a super acrostic poem entitled ‘Missing Homework’, which read as a conversation in which a pupil was trying to convince her teacher that her dragon had eaten her homework. When the teacher demanded to see the dragon as proof, the pupil had to run to her mum and ask her to buy her a dragon! The final workshop of the day came around far too quickly, and was slightly shorter than each of the previous sessions. But that didn’t deter Year 3 from getting both tasks done. Henry and Ioan’s account of a dragon eating their homework was another masterpiece that we all enjoyed listening to. But it’s fair to say that this is just a handful of all the wonderful written work that I witnessed today, so ALL of the pupils should give themselves a huge pat on the back for their effort, the work they produced, and their behaviour throughout the day. It really was a pleasure to return to Norton, and I hope to visit again when I have another new book to introduce the pupils to.
