Would you like to live forever?
During the Spring Term, students from Group 7 have been studying the book, ‘The 1000 year-old boy’ by Ross Welford and this month, as we celebrate the completion of the book study and many book events at OIS, Group 7 had a special writing workshop with the author himself!
By Kelly Hasker, Group 7 Teacher
A heartstopping, poignant, epic adventure story about a boy destined to live forever, who only wants to grow up. Without death, life is just existence. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live forever? Well, Alfie Monk can tell you.
A blurb to a book that has had Group 7 children hooked since January when we first started reading it. Since then, newspaper articles, diary entries, police reports and character descriptions have been written, plays and pieces of drama have been performed, pages analysed and predictions made.
How do you wrap up a book study? Have a writing workshop and Q&A session with the author himself…
The writing workshop - writing the first chapter
On Wednesday 12th April, Group 7 welcomed Ross Welford (virtually) for an afternoon of fun. Ross began his session by performing a magic trick for the children. Turns out he’s not just an author ,but a magician too! After being wowed by his tricks and hearing about his favourite books as a child, the children of Group 7 were led through a writing workshop or as Ross put it, ‘writing the first chapter of your best seller!’ It was an energetic, quick-paced activity which had the children capitvated and intensely scribbling away.
Once we had written the first chapters of our best sellers (yes we, the teachers got involved too) it was time for the moment we’d all been waiting for – Q&A. The children had lined up a set of questions ready to ask Ross such as, who his favourite character in the book was, which of his books are his favourite, if he’s working on anything right now and has he ever wanted to give up?
During the session, Ross Welford also told us that he had written a book about the Life Pearls (pearls that make you live forever) but he hadn’t included it in the book. This was interesting because the last piece of writing Group 7 will do on this book is write a narrative about the history of the life pearls which we will now send over to Ross who said he’d love to see them!
Will his book turn into a movie?
One interesting question asked during the Q&A was, ‘Do you want one of your books to be turned into a movie?’ To which Ross answered ‘I would love one of my books to be turned into a movie, so if any of your parents are movie producers tell them to get in touch.’
So if you’re reading this and your a movie producer, let us know as we know a great story!