Spellbound by Stories: a visit from a magical author!
To celebrate book month this April at OIS, all mileposts were treated to an author talk about ‘The Magic of Reading’ from British author, Ross Welford.
By Kelly Hasker, Group 7 Teacher, Milepost Team leader
Group 7 also had the VIP treatment of a writing workshop from him too! And to top it all off, Mr Welford isn’t just an author; he’s a magician too! Read more about all the magic and inspiration that flew around OIS on Wednesday 17 April….
The Magic of Reading
The school doors swung open at 8am and within 20 minutes, our youngest children were already transported to a place of magic! Ross Welford, a successful author and impressive magician, greeted the children in the library that morning. He shared with them his journey for falling in love with the magic of stories which inspired him to become a writer. Together, they then created a story on the spot! The children came up with characters who lost something but were able to go on an adventure to solve the problem. The story resulted in a happy ending with the characters having front row seats at a Taylor Swift concert!
Later students from Milepost 2 and 3’s enjoyed a similar energetic and inspirational talk perfectly adapted to their age; Ross discussed with them his inspirations, the power of reading and gave them tips on how to write a compelling story! Ross asked the children to pick someone famous, and by pure coincidence both MP2 and MP3’s stories concluded their adventures with the characters attending a Taylor Swift concert, she is obviously a very popular woman amongst our OIS students!
All of this wonderful storytelling was fantastically interwoven with two incredible magic tricks! One using the power of imagination and numbers to pull a book from an empty bag and become part of the elite imagination library club. The other was a hilarious way to combine magic and science that had all children, young and old, squealing with delight! And true to the magician’s oath, no matter how hard we pressed, Ross never revealed his tricks!
How to Write an Awesome Opening
And the joy didn’t stop there. For the Spring Term at OIS, our eldest students have been studying Ross Welford’s book, ‘The 1,000 Year Old Boy’ in their Language lessons. To celebrate and wrap up all of their hard work, Ross provided a special workshop just for them, on how to write an awesome opening.
Ross shared with them more of his journey into being an author and what it takes to grab the reader’s attention in those first lines of a story. With his guidance, our group 7 students wrote the first three paragraphs of their next bestsellers.
Cashmere in Group 7 said, “We had a fun time with Ross Welford. We could make stories, get tips on how to be an author AND we got personal bookmarks”.
We concluded the session by asking Ross some questions and gifting him the prequels to the 1000 year old boy that the students had been writing for the last 3 weeks – along with some Dutch treats of course!
“The day was really fun because he was very kind and he also did two amazing magic tricks! I thought it was a very fun moment and that we were lucky to see him!”, said Camilla, Group 7.
Safe to say, we were all bringing out our inner magic that day!