Impossible Creatures event with Katherine Rundell

Author Katherine Rundell visited The Grammar School at Leeds in October 2023 to speak about her new book Impossible Creatures. She spoke about her inspirations and the value of being curious to GSAL students Y5-7. Her talk was also live-streamed to over 70 classrooms of nearly 40 partnership schools, a total of over 2,000 pupils. We were also given permission to record the talk and make it available to our partnership schools with a password, and there were over 40 views of this recording.

Aims

To share an engaging and inspirational talk from a well-known and well-respected author with our partner primary schools for their pupils in KS2. This interactive event involved a talk by Katherine about how her curiosity and passion for learning has led to ideas for her books, followed by a lively Q&A session.

To reach the maximum involvement from partnership schools, we needed to offer the following:

1.       An effective workshop facilitator who could inspire and engage pupils in the senior school assembly hall as well as those live-streaming from their classrooms;

2.       A venue, the GSAL assembly hall); and

3.       Technical expertise (Actual Pixels) to deliver a successful live broadcast and recording that could be available afterwards on Vimeo.

Background

GSAL had refurbished its library over the summer of 2023, and it wanted a well-known author to launch the re-opening and to speak to the children. This was also an opportunity to include partnership schools through live streaming.

Katherine had also run a competition with independent bookshops, and one in Wetherby, Leeds, won merchandise for an engaging window display. Because of this connection with Katherine, all student book purchases for this event were done through Reading Roots.

GSAL started offering life-streamed workshops during lockdown and realised this was a convenient way to reach more pupils with engaging and educational content relevant to their curriculum.

GSAL has been running workshops for primary schools for more than nine years and running live-streamed workshops since 2020.

Resources

A space on site to hold the talk in front of a live audience;

Internet access in schools;

Videographer with multiple cameras (close and wide to maintain interest);

Zoom webinar to field questions and responses from the live virtual audience;

Non-teaching staff at GSAL and classroom teacher per class in remote audience;

Author talk was offered for free to the partnership schools.

Impact

Quantitative:

Over 70 classrooms from nearly 40 schools live-streamed the event, thereby reaching over 2,000 pupils. In addition, the recording has been viewed over 40 times.

 

Qualitative:

Feedback via email expressed enthusiasm and appreciation for watching the live stream and for the link to the recording. Here is a few of the responses received:

-          “Thank you for the invite today to the live stream, the children loved it!” – Mr March, Cookridge Holy Trinity Primary School

 

-          “I just wanted to drop you a line to thank you for inviting the children at Richmond House School to the Katherine Rundell event you hosted this morning. The Year 6 children were captivated by Katherine’s talk and there is a lot of interest in her new book. Fantastic!” – Miss Young, Richmond House School

 

-          “Hi, thank you for the invite, it was excellent and our Year 5 class at Manor Wood Primary enjoyed it. We are part of a project over the next two weeks with Leeds Beckett, working with the ‘story tellers’ and using our imagination to write about different worlds. This fitted beautifully…” – Mr Patrick, Manor Wood Primary School

Pupil Involvement

Many schools discuss Katherine’s books in class, and therefore her talk was particularly relevant to them. Pupils on-site and in remote classrooms all had opportunities to ask questions. Many questions are about what inspired her.

 

Most pupils were in Y5, though some schools included other school years. Because of the variety of her books, she targets a wide age group.

Frequency

This talk with Katherine lasted over 40 minutes. GSAL offers workshops with its partnership schools approximately once per term.