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Students at Buxton Community School met with an award winning children’s author as part of the school’s reading for pleasure initiative.

Pupils from Buxton Community 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 welcomed award-winning children’s author, Andy Mulligan, who led workshops for Year 7 students around his bestselling novel, Trash.

Associate Assistant Headteacher Adam Warrington said: “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.

Andy Mulligan visited Buxton Community pupils as part of the schools reading for pleasure campaign. Pic submitted

“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.”

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The school led reading programme involves a member of teaching staff reading a high-quality fictional novel aloud to students, three times a week.

This half term, Year 7 have been enthralled by the book ‘Trash’ and the school say they 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 says that he is always pleased to see children reading his books.

He said: “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.

He added: “Their questions showed a real understanding of the book and also an empathy that I found very moving. They were an enormous credit, I felt, to their parents and Buxton itself.”

Award winning children’s author visits Buxton pupils