Ogbourne Primary School was delighted and honoured to welcome award-winning children’s author Ruth Eastham to inspire writing, foster a love of reading and fire the children’s imaginations!

All the school were treated to an entertaining opening talk, where Ruth spoke about her first book (no it wasn’t The Memory Cage!), the objects and the settings that inspired her stories, and the ingredients of great writing. It learnt that there is only one rule for writers and that is that there are no rules!

With this liberating idea in mind, Ruth then got to work with the Willows and Poplars on getting ideas for their own writing. The children discussed ideas using Stonehenge as a mysterious, magical setting where anything is possible; portals to other worlds, time travel, the existence of giants, even a huge domino game! After some drama and freeze-framing the children were enabled to ‘power write’ for bursts of 10 minutes and their ideas poured onto the paper. They had the opportunity to extend and work on these ideas in class later in the week.

Ogbourne feels very lucky and privileged to have had this opportunity to take inspiration from a professional writer; likewise Ruth enjoyed seeing meeting the courteous, curious and creative characters at the school!

Ruth Eastham is available to give talks and run creative writing workshops at both primary and secondary level. Contact her on the following email for further information and to book a visit: [email protected]