Carnegie in Confinement: Exmouth Community College case study

January 18th 2021

With the current uncertainty around the length of schools closures in the UK, it’s possible that Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Shadowing may vary in format in 2021. However it's still set to bring outstanding reading experiences for your students to enjoy.

The flexibility of shadowing means that young people can take part in any location, so while we are hopeful that groups will be able to come together in school, CILIP are also providing a wealth of support and resources to enable pupils to take part virtually, immersing themselves in great reads and sharing their thoughts through the shadowing website. Many schools took up the opportunity of ‘virtual’ shadowing during 2020, and have shared hints and tips for other schools keen to do the same in 2021.  

Louise Burrows, Librarian at Exmouth Community College, describes their group’s experiences of remote shadowing in 2020.

Well, we always look forward to shadowing the Carnegie Medal but last year, I think it’s fair to say, posed a few challenges! 

For many years now, students from Year 9 have enjoyed reading through the books on the shortlist and choosing their favourite. Each year, once their final decision was made and the winning book chosen, we would meet at break and lunchtime, after school and even at weekends to write a script and rehearse our presentation. We would then perform this in front of other secondary schools at an event organised by our Schools Library Service in Devon. Our mission, to convince the audience that our book was the one to vote for. Happily, we have been successful many times producing convincing and winning presentations. 

We really didn't want our Year 9 students to miss out in 2020, so, undeterred by the Covid-19 lockdown, Exmouth Community College set up our Carnegie Collective Group 2020. The books arrived the day after lockdown, so, via Teams, email and Class Charts we asked who would like to join our virtual group this year. Once the group was set up, we met via Teams and each student chose a couple of books from the shortlist. Mounted on my bicycle (and in my car on occasion as one of the students lived 5 miles away!) I distributed their chosen books. 

After that we met weekly to discuss what we had read and to do various activities like, cover, blurb, opening lines etc. and also the notes on the Carnegie website. The notes were really useful as was the video CILIP aired during lockdown - thank you! Our school’s chosen winner was “On the Come Up” by Angie Thomas with “Girl, Boy, Sea” coming in a close second. Books were read and reviews were written, but the students didn’t stop there. Lydia made some fabulous pink flamingo cakes as she loved “The Black Flamingo” by Dean Atta. 

Lydia's Pink Flamingo cakes inspired by Dean Atta's The Pink Flamingo

Meanwhile Megha made a bag from recycled materials inspired by “Girl, Boy, Sea” and Adrianna made and painted a deck of playing cards inspired by “Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black.” 

Megha's bag inspired by Chris Vick's Girl. Boy. Sea.

Adrianna's Underworld of Orpheus Black-themed playing cards

For our final meeting, we ran our own Carnegie Quiz online (many thanks to Bobby Seagull for some question ideas!)  The winner received a prize goody bag with books, chocolate, stationery, chocolate, a reading light and more chocolate! Talking of prizes: in collaboration with our fantastic Art department all Year 9 students were encouraged to enter the certificate competition and Honor, one of our students only went and won!  

So, well done Year 9, thank you CILIP and here’s to 2021. 

Louise Burrows is Librarian at Exmouth Community College. Follow her on Twitter @LouTheLibrarian.

Register for the 2021 Shadowing Scheme via the CILIP Carnegie Greenaway website. Visit peters.co.uk/ckg to pre-order your Carnegie or Kate Greenaway shortlisted books today.