Lockdown has been a strange and challenging time for everyone in the country and this has been especially true of schools. Sunninghill Prep is a real community school that thrives on the daily interaction between pupils, parents and staff and suddenly we found ourselves split up. Key worker children were learning in school while their class-mates were learning from home via video conference.
Children in Form 4 struck upon a great idea to keep everyone together during this difficult time and set out to write a book called ‘Life in Lockdown’.
The story is taken up by Lecca Moss, Head of Music & Drama and Form 4 teacher, ‘We embarked on this journey to try to bring the class together during lockdown and to help maintain a sense of community. Some children were feeling alone, anxious and isolated so we thought that having a class project would help. I also thought it would become a valuable ‘time capsule’ for the children to look back on in the future. We were living history in the making and we wanted to try and capture it.’
Each Form 4 pupil contributed to the book and most wrote 3 chapters. The final book is an impressive read with 51 chapters and 80 pages in total. Chapters include diary entries, tips to staying healthy in lockdown, poems, information about the coronavirus, an A-Z of lockdown as well as personal lockdown thoughts, feelings and daily timetables.
The book has been published by Scholastic and features a lockdown photo of every child on the front cover. All pupils thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating the book and were delighted with the finished version. Here’s what our pupils had to say.
Gregory said, “Writing the book during lockdown recorded everything that happened during this unusual time. I’m happy that the whole world will know what lockdown was like and it will be good to read about it in the future.”
Kitty commented, “I really enjoyed writing my articles because it’s made me reflect on the lockdown we had. It felt amazing to have a book published that the whole of year 4 collaborated to write and also felt great that someone else could possibly read our work in the future.
Kitty said “I really love the idea of having a class book all about lockdown. It will be such a cool record of all this craziness! Writing my entry made me really wonder about other people’s experiences of lockdown, I am excited to read it!”
And the final word goes to Katy. “It was lovely to know what everyone else was up to in lockdown. I’m really looking forward to showing my family the book so they can see what we did in lockdown.”
Sunninghill Headmaster, John Thorpe said, “The book is a remarkable achievement by the whole of form 4 and their teacher, Mrs Moss. It’s something that we will always have to remind ourselves of this difficult period. We have even been approached by Dorset County Museum who are collecting artefacts for a Covid-19 display!
I could not be happier about the way our pupils, staff and parents have pulled together since the outbreak started. Everyone has worked really hard to ensure that all Forms have been able to return to school and we have also extended the summer term by 2 weeks so that we can catch up and finish the academic year properly.”
