We had a very exciting start to Monday morning at Cypress Lower as we had a wonderful assembly from author and storyteller Margaret Bateson-Hill to launch Book Week. Margaret has been a friend of the school for a long time and we all consider her part of the Cypress family.
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 were very excited to see what story Margaret would tell us today. Through the use of story, actions and song, Margaret engrossed us all in the story of ‘The Leopard’s Drum’. Osebo the leopard has a fine drum, a huge drum, a magnificent drum. All the animals want Osebo’s drum, but he won’t let anyone else have it, not even Nyame, the Sky-God. So, Nyame offers a reward to the animal that brings him the drum. All try — the monkey, the elephant, even the python — and all fail. Then a very small tortoise succeeds in outwitting the boastful leopard by tricking him into climbing inside his own drum. Nyame lets him go and Osebo learns a very important lesson about sharing.
Margaret is spending the day working with Year 2 and in her first session, with Turquoise Class, the children were fascinated to hear the story of ‘Lao Lao of Dragon Mountain’. Margaret taught the children how to paper cut which is the same skill that Lao Lao uses throughout the story. She also set them the extra challenge of creating a flower. Margaret then told the children how she had began by telling the story and then realised she needed to write it down somewhere. She wrote it on a couple of blank pages in the back of her telephone book and it was very messy. Unfortunately, her husband thought it was just scribbles and tore the pages out and threw them away. Rather than give up, Margaret produced a prototype of her book including paper cuttings. She showed the children where she had edited and improved her story by sticking flaps over the work. Once the book had been seen by a publisher, who snapped it up immediately, Margaret shared how she had worked as a team with the editor, illustrator and publisher to produce the final book. What a fascinating journey!
The children are now having a go at paper-cutting just like Lao Lao. Year 2 are also going to be designing their own dragons and creating their own dragon fact files. We can’t wait to see what they come up with.
Thank you Margaret for sharing your writing journey with us and for showing the children the importance of resilience and teamwork in writing. Thank you also to Cypress PTFA who have generously funded our author visits again this year.
Ms Binks and the Cypress Lower Team
