YLG News

Eastern YLG Branch Report – July 2003

C/KG Shadowing Day for Secondary schools: A very successful C/KG Shadowing Day for Secondary schools took place on Thursday 3rd July at Bungay High School, which is on the Suffolk/Norfolk boarder. Jason, the School’s Librarian, was a brilliant host for the occasion. He had laminated copies of both sets of criteria for each group; printed material off the website; had a copy the Shadowing video for the children to see and had even ensured that the room was arranged comfortably for the 10 discussion groups. There were over 60 Year 9 children from about 10 secondary schools and all students took part very enthusiastically, and some were very impressive as group leaders and in their reporting back at the plenary sessions. A vote was taken at the end of the day in which the Carnegie Medal went to “Across the Nightingale Floor”, and the Greenaway went to “Pants”. All in all it was a very positive experience!

We are still firming up speakers for the Story Reading Training day “Once Upon a Time” on October 17th. This training day is in response to comments on the evaluation forms from the Storytelling Course we run last December, which made it clear that delegates wanted more emphasis on what stories to read and how to read them. It is planned to offer 3 workshops each concentrating on a different type of story or client group. We are hoping to invite an author to open the day and possibly run one of the workshops. The venue will be in Suffolk, but Woolpit is literally just off the A14, so it should be accessible to a wide geographical area.

We have lost several committee members, but luckily no ‘post holders’. We will particularly miss Margaret Thompson who was a regular attendee of committee meetings.

Louise Aldridge