By Mrs Bezzer (English Teacher)

You’re stranded on a desert island: which three items would you need to survive? You have a chance to be rescued: what do you include in your message in the bottle? You want to tell others about your experience: what does your diary entry need to contain? These and other such questions have formed part of the work on travel writing that Year 8 students have been focusing on in English over the last half-term.

As well as being stranded on a desert island, we have also looked at a range of non-fiction travel writing by authors such as Bill Bryson, Klondyke Kate and Daniel Defoe. We have explored some key features of successful travel writing, and had a go at putting these techniques into practice in different ways, such as through creating a holiday brochure and analysing the key features that successful travel writers include in their work. To bring the topic to a close, Year 8 students were set the challenge of planning a school trip with a twist – Mrs Gibson was the target audience and their presentation would be shared with her, so she could see their ideas. 

Christa from 8GJP had this to say about this experience: “I have found travel writing fun and exciting and think that is a great way to use skills in writing.”

Nora commented: “I found the travel writing topic interesting as a whole because I explored different places I could talk about and what they had to offer. I especially liked creating my brochure and designing it.”

Holly said: “I think that presenting to Mrs Gibson was a great way to prepare us for the future when we have to do presentations in jobs when we are older.”

Felicity had this to say: “I enjoyed travel writing and presenting as it was nice to learn about different cultures and it was nice to be able to be independent and work in a group with our friends.”

Mrs Gibson was very impressed by the students’ presentations and, whilst she wouldn’t be drawn on her favourite school trip idea, did say “It was lovely to hear the students’ ideas,  they had clearly thought very hard about interesting places to go and had worked out the costs carefully. It makes me want to book my summer holiday!”