Six-year old Sheffield pupil wows top authors

Freya Fowlston of Sheffield’s Birley Community Primary School is a winner of the Mighty Write competition for primary school children.

The competition is run by literacy initiative Pobble.com and leading publisher Penguin Schools, to uncover the country’s most impressive writing talent. Judges were leading children’s authors Robin Stevens and Sophy Henn.

Its theme this year was, ‘If I Ruled the World’. Freya wrote that she would use her special powers to make sure that people were always happy and never became poorly.

Her work won her whole form a writing masterclass from the teachers at Pobble.com, while every children’s story entered by a teacher will be published on the Pobble website, to make those pupils published authors, before a global audience.

Penguin Schools is sending signed copies of all Sophy Henn’s books to the school, with the author also providing a video for pupils to view.

Pobble.com is an online classroom wall where children’s stories are uploaded and shared with a global audience. Becoming published motivates children to write and fires their imaginations.

Kirsty Nash, teacher at Birley Community Primary School, said: “The children in our class have loved having their work published on Pobble and seeing it up on the interactive whiteboard in our classroom. They are always desperate to see the comments on their learning from their families and others.

“I was extremely proud of the writing Freya completed independently and it was fantastic to see her face when she found out she had won. Her writing brought a tear to some people’s eyes when read out in assembly! It is wonderful to celebrate writing from such a young age and to share this safely on the internet.”