On 7th November the Cardiff Group met for the first time to begin our contribution to the OU Reading for Pleasure community. As everyone arrived they shared books they had brought with each other and started to get to know each other, while drinking tea and eating book themed cakes!
We spent the first part of the session welcoming everyone, introducing the Research Rich Pedagogies website: the newsletter; the research and case studies. We were incredibly fortunate to have a guest speaker at the first session, local author Nicola Davies. The numbers attending exceeded our expectations and, in a room packed with over 50 children’s literature enthusiasts, Nicola told the stories behind her stories and treated the audience with her narration of ‘The Promise’ and ‘The Day War Came’. She described children’s literature as a ‘safe place’ to prepare children for the tougher things in life and providing an opportunity to develop empathy. Alongside teachers and teaching assistants, we welcomed librarians, the Book Trust, Literacy Wales and so many past Cardiff Met PGCE students. The content of our book box was boosted with some wonderful donations from Nicola. Those that attended began to share some favourites before the end of the session. There was a wonderful literacy buzz in the room and we enjoyed some fabulous responses on Twitter after the event. We ended the session by sharing the Review Your Practice document and asked everyone to fill this in and to bring back to share and discuss as a group next time.
We are really looking forward to the next session on 21st November.
