Cranford Review 2009

First
Story
Readings
On Thursday 7th May 2009 Cranford Community College hosted their second official
First Story readings where thirteen year 12 students read their own creative pieces
inspired from their childhood memories.
The workshop, which began in September 2008, has been hosted by our very own
in house writer in residence Will Fiennes author of ‘The Snow Geese’ and ‘The
Music Room’. Will has encouraged students to use their imagination and relive their
precious moments that they experienced whilst growing up and turn them into fun,
exciting and touching pieces of writing.
It was an event attended by staff, parents, students and other authors associated with
the First Story scheme. It was a great success and one enjoyed by all. It was definitely
inspirational and even influenced
some members of the audience to
begin writing their own stories.
Three lucky young writers Shadnam
Ahmed, Gagandeep Chaggar and
Jagdip Randhawa were selected from
the group to attend the summer school
writers workshop in Shropshire.
A young author’s Summer School Workshop with First Story
The week we spent in Shropshire helped my writing skills a lot. It was structured around
workshops. Authors such as Pete Hobbs would prod us in the right directions by setting
us simple writing tasks to complete; for example we wrote stories based around what a
specific smell reminded us of and another time we tried to write poetry about random
objects given to us in bags, such as apples.
The workshops were not the only way the trip helped. We read extracts from our favourite
books to each other, thus learning more about what other people like to read. The authors
also helped us by teaching us the importance of editing our work properly, so we went
away and drafted our stories several times. On the last day we read out the
final version of our best stories.
When we had to come back at the end of the week, we were given elaborate
notepads/diaries to write in. Overall, this was a very enjoyable experience.
By Shadnam Ahmed (year 12)
“The thirteen students whose
work you’re about to read
have their own voices, their
own ways of seeing, their own
stories - unprecedented and
unrepeatable - of memories
and feelings. Even when I
thought they’d never stop
talking, they wrote things
that surprised and moved me.
They made me laugh, lots.”
By William Fiennes
(Writer in Residence)
GCSE Success
We are truly delighted at
another leap forward on
the school’s journey to
‘Excellence in All Areas’
with these record smashing
results by Cranford’s hard
working students. Everyone
in the school community is
so proud of them all.
These well deserved results
continue the steep trend of
improvement at the school
across the last 7 years.
This year our GCSE students
achieved an impressive
14% rise in 5+ A*-C and a
7% increase including both
English and maths. The
huge rise in the points score
confirms that many more
pupils are passing with the
highest grades and will be
well placed to follow in the
footsteps of last week’s 3
Oxbridge successes.
Jagjit Kang achieved 14
GCSEs with 11 at grade
A* and 3 at grade A and
Harsimran Sall achieved 15
GCSEs with 10 A* and 5 A
grades.
More high flying pupils are
benefiting from gifted and
talented provision and are
being accelerated, including
various fast track and
early GCSE and AS entry
programmes.
Alongside their GCSE
success, a number of
students picked up an AS
level one year early and all
at the higher grades.
The students are reaping
the rewards of hard work
by them, school staff and
supportive families.
Kevin Prunty
(Headteacher)
20 Cranford Review 2008/09