Working with author Simon Puttock
June 30th, 2008
Simon Puttock is an award winning author who has published many children’s books. His books, including Mrs Fox, Goat Donkey and the Strawberry Sunglasses are firm favourites on The Reading Bus.
Primary 5 at Sunnybank enjoyed a short residency with Simon Puttock during this summer term. The class worked with Simon for four sessions and all wrote their own fantastic stories.
Here, in their own words, is a summary from Primary 5:
Week 1 - We didn’t know what you wanted us to do , but we all soon started to have fun. You started to write our spelling words on the board in a funny collection and “The Three-Word Game” was born. Here are some of our three words: “invisble eating car”, “paper projector holder”, “destruction grill monster”, “diamond powered pistol”.
Week 2 - We talked about the three word game and how to make our words into a story. We discussed the problems some of us had with our stories.
Week 3 - We quickly got down to work and after reading some plans and stories, you gave us advice on how to make our stories better.
Week 4 - Your last week. We read some of our stories and recorded our 3 words for The Reading Bus Radio. You even read us one of your stories - “Miss Fox”.
This is what we thought about our sessions with Simon:
“Your visits helped to boost my confidence and the best part about it was the three letter word game. I felt happy because you showed me how to write exciting, emotional and intersting stories. I learned that stories can be exciting and be fun and not just a chore.”
“I could not have written my story if you had not come. We really liked your lessons. You were fantastic, brave, not shy and funny. Everyone in the classroom laughed and were so amazed at what you have done.”
“Your visits made me boost my confidence so I can write better stories. I also learned that anyone can write a story and it doesn’t take a few hours. Your visit has really made me improve my writing.”
“When you came in I was scared but during the weeks I wasn’t scared. I will try to write a bit more.”
Here are two of the stories from Primary 5
The Bouncing Tiger
Once there was a tiger called Stips who was very kind. She like to play with other tigers. Stigs had black stripes and ginger paws with very long, sharp claws She liked to bounce with her friends on her friend’s tampouline.
One day Strips was on her way home from school when she sawy something in the back garden. Her Mum had bought her a brand new trampouline. She was so happy she gave her Mum a huge hug and a kiss. She went onto her trampoline staright away and was there until bedtime.
The next morning her Mum woke up to a boing, boing noise. She looked out of her window and saw Stips bouncing in the trampoline. Mum went downstairs and told Steps to get ready for school but Stips refused and kept on bouncing because she loved bouncing on her new trampoline.
Stips remembered that her best friend had told her about a competition for the most jumps so Stips decided to enter it. Stips practised and practised her bouncing all day and all night. She didn’t even stop to have her supper.
On the Sunday when the competition was over Stips was the best bouncer and made over a million jumps. She won the biggest trophy and 5 million pounds for her Mum. Mum bought Stips a brand new trampoline that was so big it took up the whole garden.
By Nicole K
Dragon Book Island
Chapter One - Long Ago
Long, long ago in a magic island called Dragon Island, there were dragons of types you could never imagine. There were nature dragons, mystery dragons, seal dragons, tiger dragons, electric and fire dragons. The island was very peaceful until one day the Dragon Slayers came.
The Dragon Slayers slew all the dragons that they could find. A few of the dragons managed to escape and survive including the last mystery dragon, but it was still in the egg and almost buried. The other dragons hid in a buried cave that only dragons could get into. The mystery dragons could only be killed with a special sword made of gold and precious power crystals that were found in dangerous places and deep under the ground.
Chapter Two - Found and Attacked
Almost a centry after the attack by the Dragon Slayers, the mystery dragon egg was found by two dragons. They found the egg while one of them was digging. The dragon hit something hard and white, so the other dragon began to help him dig round the object. When they took it out they realised it was an egg. The egg felt very smooth at first until a small crack began to appear. Then a little head appeared in the crack. It was a little baby dragon.
To be continued
Andres Hernandez
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed