Today, we are incredibly proud of three of our children and one of our teachers, who left Newport early this morning, to drive over to Wellington College in Berkshire, England, to present at The Sunday Times Education Festival. Alex, Adam and Molly, three pupils from Year 3, accompanied by Mrs Watkins, were asked to present at the festival, after a su
ccessful previous presentation at the NACE conference earlier this year. They were presenting about our Talented Readers club, run by Mrs Watkins.
We, as a school, have bought into RM Bookshelf, an ebook store/library for schools. The software comes as a webpage and an iPad app, and allows the teacher to assign books to the pupils to read on their electronic devices. Pupils can also browse the ebook store and electronically request to read a book, for which, the teacher can accept or decline the request. Mrs Watkins and her Talented Readers have been reading lots of books, using RM Bookshelf and then writing reviews about the books, posting these reviews to our blog. This is greatly developing literacy skills and we’re currently in the process of rolling the RM bookshelf out to other year groups.
All three children presented brilliantly in their own workshop and demonstrated some of the great which which they’ve produced.
Following their presentation, they filmed their own BBC School Report and were also asked to submit their blogs to “Teach Primary” magazine. They then spent rest of the day exploring the other stalls at the festival and even got to go skiing, snowboarding and scuba diving!
Other speakers at the event included Christine Blower, David Starkey, Simon Armitage, Ian Livingstone, Dylan Wiliam, Simon Mayo, Howard Goodall and Jonny Mitchell.
We’re grateful to all three children, their parents and Mrs Watkins, Mrs Evans and Mr Rees, for giving up their Saturday to represent St. Julian’s Primary School at such a large prestigious event. We really are very proud and I’m sure the children will remember today’s experience, for many years to come.
Da iawn pawb!
