• I’ve been over to Whitchurch C of E School this week, to discuss a project we’ll be working on together. They have an unusual year five – there are only four girls in the class! This cohort has moved through the school years.

    I met them recently when we did a story planning session. I’m going to work with them on how I can release Dark Claw as a Creative Commons project. I hope that we will produce a body of work that will be of interest and a template to inspire other schools and groups around the world to have a go themselves. I think there is a lot to be explored – a whole alternative universe in fact. It is a writing project, but we’ll be using all sorts of modelling and technology to make it more interesting and relevant.

    I’m really looking forward to it. I normally meet groups of 30 to 600 for an hour and talk about me! This time I’ll get to see how individuals and a class work on something over time and will get to know the students too. Planning things with their teacher, Beth Stevens, I realised how much I don’t know about what goes on in the classroom over the week. I’m sure it will all come out in the wash and I’ll learn to pace myself and my expectations. Either way I think it’s going to be fun and VERY interesting!

  • Today I visitednnsworth Junior School in Gloucester.

    We did lots of drawing as well as storytelling. I should heave taken some pictures of the drawings. I love the way everyone draws the same thing and yet all the pictures are so different according to the way each child sees what I show them to do.

    sometimes little mistakes or misreading of my instructions can be really creatively interesting. The best bit is when We’ve finished and go on to Q&As. some children carry on drawing – adding stuff and expanding their drawings.

    I encourage a light touch for the planning and underdrawing. Then I show how to press harder for the finished drawing on top. If this was ink then the under drawing can be rubbed out afterwards,

    What’s interesting is that at the beginning there are lots of calls for erasers. I tell them they don’t need them – just keep drawing.. By the end everyone is drawing and erasers and rubbing out are forgotten.

    One or two teachers joined in and seemed more pleased with their efforts that the children were with their own!

    Thanks for a great Day, Innsworth.

  • I nearly crashed the car this morning. I was listening to the radio when a news article about carbon trading came on. The Friends of the Earth claim that Carbon trading is now being wrapped up into derivatives by the financial world, setting us up for another crash.

    The Financial expert came on and, with a patronising tone, said the the FOE lady obviously didn’t understand the complexity of financial markest.

    What! I yelled at the cows in the field. It’s the Financial experts who do not understand the the financial markets. They have made that very clear. If they had the slightest clue of what they were doing we would not be in the mess we are in now. It’s the financial experts that created the crash and the recession. They are driven by greed and care only to rob those who entrust their money to them.

    As for the carbon trading scheme – What a scam! Could anyone think up a scheme more open to fraud? Well, maybe the old milk quotas were as bad – similar scam really.

    Why do we put up with it?