Windmill Hill Primary have just had an inspirational two days with Jan Dean. She started with a motivational assembly and then worked with each class in the school.

Jan has a lovely manner with the children and has a knack of developing their imagination. All the lessons were well organised and suited to each age group. Jan used a wide selection of props which allowed the children to be creative. The children's verdict was "fantastic" and we have already booked her again. 

Joy Johnson (Deputy Head)
Windmill Hill Community Primary School, Runcorn

Jan has visited the library at Wilmslow (as well as other Cheshire Libraries) on a number of occasions to work with classes invited from local schools or with groups of local children during holiday times. Jan’s enthusiasm is infectious – children (and adults in attendance!) thoroughly enjoy her poetry performances as well as the workshop element when they are offered the chance to be creative themselves both in the writing and then performance of their own poem.

Jan came to us on World Book Day this year and ran a workshop with a Year 6 class from a local school – it was a splendidly joyful occasion where all the children were involved. Their teacher was particularly pleased that a couple of children who lacked confidence in their creative writing skills were very engaged by the session. All the children were given a copy of the poem that they had collectively written and I know that Jan was subsequently invited to visit the school to run further workshops with other age groups.

During the summer holidays this year she visited us to work with a mixed age group of children as part of our activities linked to the Summer Reading Challenge. Following a humorous and lively poetry performance, the children worked with Jan to create two poems about a dragon. They performed their poems to the delight of all others around in the library at the time – the feedback we had was without exception very positive!

Helen Perry
(Library Manager – Cheshire East)