A group of ten students in Year 7 at King James I Academy have recently attended a special event with the novelist, Dame Jacqueline Wilson. The popular author who has written more than 100 books, including The Story of Tracy Beaker series, is best known for her children’s literature tackling realistic topics such as adoption, abuse, and divorce.
The Academy Library stocks a wide range of Jacqueline Wilson novels, which consistently prove to be some of the most popular with younger readers, especially those in Year 7. For this reason, when the Academy was given the opportunity to take ten students to meet the author, a competition was launched and those who earned the most Sparx points in a two-week period were invited to attend the talk at Belmont Community School.
The Sparx Reader initiative sets reading as homework and students earn points for successful completion of comprehension tests. Year 7s have engaged with this particularly well and reading for both education and pleasure has become part of their everyday life; the Academy is confident that this will have an extremely positive impact on attainment, as studies have shown that regular reading improves literacy skills considerably.
Over a three-day residency at Belmont, Dame Wilson talked about the power of storytelling and her writing process with students, teachers and librarians. It was an inspirational experience for young people who returned to King James with lots of ideas for creative writing.
