Since World Book Day, children at NCEA Thomas Bewick C of E Primary School have been competing against other primary schools within the NCEA Trust to see how much they could read over a 3 week period.

After an intense battle, Thomas Bewick won by clocking up 38 minutes of engaged reading time a day and by reading over 1,300 books!

As a reward for this phenomenal achievement, Vashti Hardy (the author of the award-winning children’s book, Brightstorm) came to our school to give a talk about being a writer. The children were given tips such as: write what you know about and what you are interested in, use a Writing Journal (where you can write and plan whatever you like), collect pictures of what you are writing about to help inspire you and of course, draw a map (because all good books contain a map!)

The children absolutely loved listening to Vashti and were really inspired by her talk – we couldn’t stop them asking so many questions afterwards!