Welcome to Andy Mulligan
Visit from award-winning author
Students in all year groups across the school now participate in school led reading sessions which aim to keep students enjoying reading and accessing high quality fiction, whilst recognising the wider benefits that reading for pleasure can bring. As part of this initiative the school were thrilled to welcome award-winning children’s author, Andy Mulligan, who lead workshops for Year 7 students around his bestselling novel, Trash.
The school led reading programme involves a member of teaching staff reading a high-quality fictional novel aloud to students, three times a week. Associate Assistant Headteacher Adam Warrington said that by ‘reading to students, we can supplement the text with valuable context that boosts student knowledge and understanding and allows us to explore links and parallels to content in the wider curriculum as appropriate. We are dedicated to ensuring that progress is made at every stage of our students’ learning journey and are sure that this new initiative will provide endless opportunities for that.’
This half term, Year 7 have been enthralled by the book ‘Trash’ and loved having the opportunity to meet the author. He was able to read sections of the book aloud to the students, whilst telling them about the origins of the book and how his own experiences of teaching in the Philippines inspired him to write the award-winning novel. Mr Mulligan regularly tours schools across the country and said he was always pleased to see children reading his books: “I meet plenty of kids who don’t like writing and claim not to like reading, but you never meet a child, or adult, who doesn’t like a story.” The students certainly made the most of their opportunity and left a lasting impression on Mr Mulligan. He was amazed at how much they had engaged with his book. Mr Mulligan said, ‘their questions showed a real understanding of the book and an empathy I found very moving. They were an enormous credit, I felt, to their parents and Buxton itself!’
It was a pleasure to welcome Andy to the school and we look forward to working with him again in the future.