On Thursday years three and four, and five and six, enjoyed a non-fiction writing workshop wth Isobel Thomas, writer of over 120 non-fiction books for children. The year threes and fours learned about some of the unusual creatures that Isobel has written about and had a go at using descriptive language and comparisons to describe their own strange creatures provider in secret boxes. They then had to swap their descriptions with another group to see if the other children could draw the animal based on their descriptions. The children also enjoyed some weird and wonderful drawings of animals from hundreds of years ago that had been based on descriptions given by travellers across the seas.
The children enjoyed a Q and A session with Isobel when they learnt about all the different books she and what inspired her in her writing, which had begun when she was their own age when she did lots of non-fiction writing about holidays and animals at home. The children will certainly be building on the skills when they encounter non-fiction writing in the classroom in the future and some were very enthusiastic about the idea that they could get their own work published via e book PDFs on Amazon!