Dan Freedman

 

Dan Freedman, children's book author and former football journalist took part over video conference, live from Highlands Primary School, to connect to schools across Redbridge to hear the children's football chants and speak to them about his series of Jamie Johnson's books, which are now broadcast on TV with the BBC.
Dan shared quotes from his yet to be published book "Unstoppable" (he told the children he had been working on writing it for five years!). He answered questions from the children about his career, what inspires him, his childhood, and gave advice to the children for writing their own stories.  Dan also judged a competition held to find the best football chant. Well done, to the three winners, who each received a signed book from Dan: Fairlop Primary, Gearies Primary and Avanti Court Primary.
Dan quotes: The technology worked really well and I could clearly hear and see all the children from the schools. The ability for me to reach out to them all at once in such a short period of time was just fantastic. The chants were all, incredible, well written, sang and choreographed. I felt very emotional when i heard the Jamie Johnson chant.

Matthew Patterson, Class teacher at Highlands said,  " for the children to meet an author and speak to him, while connected to other local schools, over video conference makes them all feel part of the same "fan club", because they have all read the same book and now they get to ask questions to the author, about the characters and this is what makes learning real for them".

Year 6 pupil at Highlands quotes: It is not usual for us to have the opportunity to meet an author and with the video conference we do not need to travel to see him or other children from other schools. I can`t wait to go home, and read my new book, Skills from Brazil.