Character Profiles - One-to-one Reading Partnerships in Sheffield Schools

At the end of last term (16 December 2009) we held a celebration event for all the Reading Leaders we have trained in Sheffield schools this year. It was a fantastic event with author Alan Gibbons giving an inspired presentation, more like a comedy routine than a writer talking about his work. I'll give some more details when I get the photos through. In the meantime I wanted to share another activity we undertook with all the reading mentors we supported last year, over 200 of them!

All of the Sheffield mentors and their partners had the opportunity to complete a character profile about someone they read about together, and we have compiled the results into a book that you can read and download online:

Michael Rosen's underpants

A good day today. I placed a new volunteer at All Saints school and I think she is going to fit in really well. I had a meeting at Fir Vale school with lots of interesting ideas for community reading projects. But (and no disrespect to All Saints or Fir Vale) the winner is Newfield school, where I was invited to celebrate the opening of their new building to see the wonderful Michael Rosen perform. Louise the Librarian at Newfield had organised the day had got a great audience together; Newfield students and hangers-on like me, but the the room was mainly full of children from local primary schools who got so much out of their visit, and I bet a lot of them are looking forward to their seconadry education a whole lot more after today.
Michael Rosen is such as personable guy, no one could take their eyes off him. Having said that, my favourite bit was a story which included some underpants that ended up on a ceiling light, and as Michael pointed at the ceiling half the children looked up and I am sure many of them saw the underpants! There was no great theme or message to the performance just a lot of super stories and poems and confirmation that we are all writers to some degree. Plus I got my book signed, actually 4-mont old Rose got her book signed!

I might be breaking some copyrights here, but I wanted to share the poem that we all performed together, I think it's great and helps reaffirm why I do what I do at Reading Matters.

Words Are Ours by Michael Rosen

In the beginning was the word
and the word is ours

The names of places,
the names of flowers,
the names of names,
words are ours.

Page turners
for early learners

How to boil an egg
or mend a leg

Words are ours

Wall-charts
Love hearts

Sports reports
Short retorts

Jam-jar labels
Timetables

Words are ours

Following the instructions
for furniture constructions

Ancient mythologies
Online anthologies

Who she wrote for
Who to vote for

Joke collections
Results of elections

Words are ours

The tale’s got you gripped
Have you learned your script?

The method of an experiment
Ingredients for merriment

W8n 4ur txt
Re: whts nxt

Print media
Wikipedia

Words are ours

Subtitles on TV
Details on your CV

Book of great speeches
Guide to the best beaches

Looking for chapters
on velociraptors

Words are ours

The mystery of history
The history of mystery

The views of news
The news of views

Words to explain
the words for pain.

Doing geography
Autobiography

What to do in pay-phones
Goodbyes on gravestones

Words are ours

from www.readingforlife.org.uk