We were delighted to welcome author, Bali Rai to Etone on Tuesday, 13th May. Bali is an internationally renowned author so we were delighted to have secured a visit by him. His visit was focused on the benefits of reading, and how to create interesting characters by showing rather than telling readers about them. This further supported the breadth of literacy work that we do in school and was a stimulating experience for pupils.
Prior to Bali’s visit, all Year 7 and 8 pupils read an extract from ‘Now or Never: A Dunkirk Story’, one of Bali’s novels which is a moving and insightful account of World War 2 narrated by Private Fazal Khan, a young Muslim soldier in Company 32 of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps
Bali started his day by delivering a talk to Year 7 about the three superpowers of reading. Readers develop critical skills for living in the modern world:
- Intelligence
- Creativity
- Empathy
He then delivered three workshops in which he challenged pupils to think about their own identity. Pupils created a ‘human pizza’ selecting four key elements of their lives which make them who they are. This week, we launch our competition based on Bali’s writing workshop to write an introduction of yourself as a character using ‘show not tell’. The prizes for the winners will be signed books.
As always, we were incredibly impressed with Etone pupils’ warm welcome, intelligent engagement, and spontaneous thanks.
