We loved having Phil Cummings here!

        This term  Phil Cummings came to our school to talk about writing with the year 6/7 classes. Wednesday morning all the senior students went to the gym to see him. When we got there he was talking to us about the way he writes and what inspires him. Many stories were told that were funny. They were mostly about himself. Phil also talked about the meanings behind his books.

While Phil was here he talked about where he gets his inspiration from and why he is a writer. This included showing us his edited work and some of his older books. Phil also told us that if he is out somewhere and gets an idea he has to write it down immediately otherwise he will forget. All of pieces of paper with the ideas on them are kept so that when he gets asked for a particular book, the chances are that he has already got an idea written down.

Phil also did a work shop/ lecture with all the senior student classes. He taught us how to use descriptive phrases in our writing. Phil also showed us how to he starts to write a book. It was really interesting because we actually got to write and plan exactly as he does. What we focused on was descriptive phases; he wanted us to use many different descriptive words in our planning and writing.

Overall we had an amazing time and we learnt a lot of things such as, planning and having many ideas before writing a book. We also learnt that we need to have descriptive phrases to make stories more interesting. Another thing we learnt was that there are many meanings behind books connecting with symbolism. In ‘Ride Ricardo Ride’, Phil used light and darkness as well as shadows and repetitive language to give the reader a message. We loved having Phil Cummings here and we can’t wait until his new books come out!

Abbey Hill, Adele Cocks