Wordsmiths, Eva in Year 7 and Stephanie in Year 9 are delighted to have been selected for the next round of BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’ competition; the UK’s most successful short story-writing competition for children between the ages of 5 and 13. Since its launch in 2011, it has seen a total of 934,296 stories entered!
Eva and Stephanie first submitted their stories ‘Hey diddle-diddle’ and ‘A New Leaf’ after English Teacher, Merion Taynton, incorporated the competition into Year 7’s curriculum and encouraged Year 8 and 9 to enter, in a bid to engage her students with their creative callings.
Merion said “We worked on the stories for a couple of weeks in class, but didn’t provide feedback as we usually would, because we didn’t feel this would be fair. Instead we carried out lots of activities around writing, such as how to write a telling description and create a good plot structure.”
Merion continued “We hope to encourage more students to enter national writing competitions in the future and look forward to running our remote Creative Writing club in the Summer Term. My congratulations go out to Eva and Stephanie; this is a fantastic achievement and an inspiration to other students who might like to give it a go!”
Year 7 were even fortunate enough to bag a writer’s workshop with the School’s Patron of Reading, Julian Sedgewick, ahead of submitting their stories. Julian inspired students with his wit and musings on Japan and the country’s fascination with terrifying tales, before they put pen to paper to bring their own ghostly scenarios to life.
Finding out that Eva’s story had made it through to the second round of the competition, from over 135,000 entries down to 5000, Eva’s mother, Jules, commented “Eva was so thrilled to hear this news, she let out an ear-splitting squeal! It has cheered us all. We feel very proud of her.” The author herself commented “This was an amazing surprise. I didn’t think it would happen, I kinda just expected to do a story for my English teacher. I feel a bit confused, but super happy.”
A keen writer outside of the classroom, Stephanie exclaimed “I am very pleased and am hoping to get to the next round.” Stephanie’s mother, Elena, remarked “It’s great news! We are thrilled for Stephanie and are keeping our fingers crossed.”
This year, the Duchess of Cornwall will return as an Honorary Judge for the competition’s final, which is to be broadcast live from Buckingham Palace on Friday 12th June. Complete with live music and sensational storytelling, the winning entries will be read by a fantastic line-up. Not only this, six amazing illustrators: Tony Ross, Fiona Lumbers, David McKee, Sue Cheung, David Roberts, and Margaret Sturton, will each be set the task of illustrating one of the winning stories.
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