When Tom Palmer arrived on Friday 22nd September, all of Year 6 were excited as we were going to meet a real-life author; the author of the book we have been reading in our English lessons this half-term (D-Day Dog)! Whilst he was with us, he talked about the first ever book he wrote - a book about football. This was because, at the time, he was (and still is) obsessed with watching and playing football. He described to us that when he was in school, he hated writing and wasn't at all interested in English or Reading. However, over time he started to fall in love with books and then writing.
During our time with Tom, we learnt different techniques that Tom uses when he edits and improves his writing. Tom used one of our pieces of writing and modelled these 5 skills: addition (adding new words/phrases into the text), subtraction (removing unnecessary words), multiplication where you extend sentences to add more detail and division which involves identifying certain sentences that need to be shortened and divided into two separate sentences. He also taught us how to swap out words to improve our writing. He told us that when he wrote D-Day Dog, he must have edited and changed different aspects of his novel at least 52 times! This really inspired us to work on improving our writing and not to just accept the first draft that we write!
We were really inspired by Tom Palmer. Not only did we get to meet him in person, but he introduced a writing competition within our classes to write a setting description that links with a key moment/setting in hisa book 'D-Day Dog'. We're in the process of finishing these off and cannot wait to find out who may win!
