Goldstone Primary School & Little Owls Nursery

Year 3 are incredibly lucky that over the past 5 years, we have domesticated and tamed our very own 'real-life' author. Every year, the project changes little by little, but the aim is to use the fantastic story of Stitch Head, by Guy Bass, to teach and boost reading and writing engagement across the whole year group.

Guy has written such a fabulously, wonderfully, hilarious book filled with excitement, adventure and intrigue that no one can fail to be brought along in its fantastic wake. The book, and subsequent 'challenge o'clocks', engages proficient writers who want to learn and improve their storytelling skills; to reluctant writers who suddenly find that they can write things that make people laugh and by following some simple steps can be inspired by a real author to create a story of their own. We spend just over half a term reading the story, writing to Guy Bass through email (using our computing lessons on safe email to help us) and getting real-time feedback on work that is sent. The reaction of children when their work is commented on by a real author is incredible to see. It is a wonderful project that children and teachers look forward to and get excited about. 

Every week we write to Guy. One or two children from a class are chosen to be the emailers, and this is a great honour to be someone who takes the ideas and questions of a whole class to the computer of the incredible Mrs Winter who has been our guide to the slightly mad and wild world of Guy. Once the email is created it is sent, often containing examples of fantastic work that has been created in our step by step approach to writing an awesome story, and the wait for the reply begins........Then, as if by magic, a reply from Guy will appear in our classrooms and we can enjoy the craziness that he encourages in us all. This year, his monkey assistant Perigrine Booth has taken over the typing for Guy and then we have all kind of hilarity reading the replies. At the end of Guy's reply, he sets his Challenge O'Clock. The class then have the next week to complete Guy's challenge so that we can send the excellent examples of work off for perusal by Guy (and Perigrine).

The documents that follow on this page show some of our emails and work with Guy.

Sienna and Eli from 3S sent our first email to find out a bit about Guy

and we sent him some of our work to look at:

and Guy replied:

This week, it was the turn of 3A. Emily and Albert (who were also our Gold Standard winners) were chosen for the job. They asked:

We sent our work from the Challenge O'Clock

This week it was 3WH who were getting to write to the wonder (and slightly bonkers) that is Guy Bass. Selim and Adam were the question masters this week!

We sent our work from the Challenge O'Clock