St Catherine’s Primary School recently had a celebrity visit from TV star Johnny Ball as part of the Creative Partnerships Project which helps teachers make lesson time more interesting and entertaining.
Headteacher Fiona Rigby said:
“If we can get a little bit more of Johnny’s passion and enthusiasm into every lesson we will improve on what is already a fabulous school. Happier, more relaxed teachers with the confidence to be more creative will lead to happy, relaxed and fun-filled learners.”
Johnny is pictured with Mr Jonathan Lear who has just won the National Teacher of the Year award for the North of England, a personal triumph as well as a major coup for the school. Mr Lear, who’s led the way in developing Creativity Schemes for the school and who invited Johnny, one of his childhood heroes, said of the show:
“I hope it helps teachers think of themselves as performers resulting in children that are more enthusiastic and motivated in their learning.”
While all the children we asked had never heard of Johnny Ball, they clearly enjoyed the show, including Year 4’s Edgar and Sheridan, who particularly enjoyed learning how satellites work and how cannonballs are fired. Adam from Y5 loved helping Johnny with his display and found the information about gravity interesting. Macaul and Amy from Y6 thought the teachers could gain lots of ideas from Johnny in making learning more fun. We interviewed Johnny to find out more.
Q: Can you tell us about what you do and the projects you are involved in?
A: I travel around schools and universities lecturing about maths and science, I was invited to this school to speak to the children and to hopefully give the teachers some insight in how to be more creative in lesson time.
Q: How will this benefit the children and teachers?
A: Both teachers and children will hopefully enjoy school more, the children will focus more if the teacher’s delivery is more entertaining.
Q:Why did you decide to become a TV presenter?
A: I used to be a comedian before I became a TV presenter. I enjoyed being myself and I enjoyed maths and I couldn’t be myself when I was a comedian, so television gave me a window of opportunity to be myself and enjoy myself. All in all Johnny’s visit was a huge success. All of the children and staff enjoyed his presentation and feel that St Catherine’s will benefit greatly from his visit.