Last updated at 17:05, Monday, 26 March 2012

AMAZED students encountered a real life Gruffalo in the classroom.

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Youngsters at Furness Academy made a double take as their principal Douglas Blackledge, dressed as the creature from the award-winning children’s book, The Gruffalo, stepped into morning registration on Friday.

Transfixed Year Seven pupils listened and watched as Mr Blackledge gave an animated reading of Julia Donaldson’s famous tale.

Wearing a Gruffalo mask and a furry brown tunic, made by the textiles department, and standing barefoot, Mr Blackledge created voices for all the different animal characters to the amusement of the Year Seven SR1 group.

The class had been expecting Mr Blackledge that morning but had no idea he would turn up as the Gruffalo.

Student, Nathan Shaw, 12, said: “I was not expecting that. It was very exciting. Mr Blackledge was very funny. It took guts. It was a good idea to make reading fun.”

Mr Blackledge also dropped into Year Seven SY1. He said: “It was tremendous, just really good fun.

“People suggested that it would be good if the Gruffalo appeared in person, but we couldn’t find him and they got me. It was a little bit of fun to ignite the joy of reading and story telling.

“Young people are very embroiled in technology, and we think that is very exciting, but it has to be in balance.”

Senior leaders of the academy have been reading to Year Seven students as part of the ‘share a story’ project which aims to boost reading ages.

Year Seven students have individual reading targets and they are clocking up a word bank as they work their way through different books.

The academy’s first word millionaire, having read a million words, was Joshua Haigh, 11.

First published at 13:07, Monday, 26 March 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk