PUPILS tried their hand at news reporting at Westfield Arts College in Weymouth and discovered revelations about their teachers.

The Year 9 youngsters in Moreton Class played a ‘Guess Who’ game after interviewing their teachers with a series of open-ended questions.

Ben Gilbert, aged 13, of Crossways, found out that his PE teacher Ashley Vickers’ most precious possession is a sword, the pupils also discovered that Headteacher Andrew Penman spent all his summers in Norfolk and that the school’s studio and media manager Carl Greenham previously enjoyed working with DJ Chris Evans on Virgin Radio.

Another interview found that their teacher Dawn Brooks enjoys caving and her most precious possession is her Mini car.

The teenagers compiled their findings in a PowerPoint presentation, making their class-mates guess who the interviewee was after answers were revealed.

They also quizzed Echo news reporter Laura Kitching and photographer Finnbarr Webster about local journalism as part of their Independent Living Skills course.

Top questions included ‘Were you inspired to be a journalist by the film Tintin?’ ‘Have you ever written about Pokemon?’ and ‘Have you ever met any celebrities?’ The answers were unfortunately no to the first two and more excitingly, the Queen, Olympians and David Dickinson for the second.

The pupils were also given a demonstration in shorthand.

Class tutor Terry Dunn said the class had really enjoyed tackling the topic of communications.

He said: “As part of the subject of Independent Living Skills we’ve been doing a communications ladder of various topics.

“We’ve written letters to France and the pupils had to go and ask people questions.

“Then we invited the Dorset Echo in to talk about news reporting, the pupils really got a lot out of it.

“It’s a very mixed group with very mixed needs but with a bit of extra support all the pupils thrive and enjoy what they’re doing.”

WESTFIELD is a specialist Visual and Performing Arts College, which means that it receives additional money from the government to spend on subjects like art and design, music, drama and dance.

Westfield Arts College, in Preston, Weymouth is the largest maintained special school within Dorset.

It caters for the needs of 186 children from across Dorset, with the majority of pupils coming from the Weymouth, Portland and Dorchester triangle.

It provides for the individual learning needs of boys and girls - aged three to 19 years old – who have moderate or complex learning difficulties. It also has a specialist Autism Base for 30 children with autistic spectrum disorders.

The multi-award winning school is an active member of the Chesil Education Partnership.

It has Leading Edge status and is the only special school in the country deemed by the government to be a Training School – offering programmes of high quality professional training to its staff and other schools in the region. Visit www.west field.dorset.sch.uk