Welcome to Julia Edwards Books!

Pentathlon
Writing Programme!

Rebuild your children's writing confidence post Covid with

Julia's Pentathlon programme!

Julia has taught writing workshops in schools for almost a decade, making over 150 visits to schools since her first book was published, and working with with half a dozen individual schools on the annual Patron of Reading scheme.

Her visits to schools across the UK in 2022 and 2023 revealed a significant drop in the writing confidence and stamina of KS2 and KS3 children, probably as a result of the disruption to learning caused by Covid. Consequently, Julia is offering a targeted programme to help schools retrain their 'writing athletes' by rebuilding their children's skills and confidence.

The Pentathlon Writing Programme tackles a combination of the following skills in each writing 'athletics' session :

Stamina

Technique

Accuracy

Mindset

Pleasure

~ strategies for keeping going

~ working on specific skills to improve writing

~ tackling spelling and grammar

~ defeating doubt

~ finding the fun to keep you going!

The format of the Pentathlon Writing Programme is similar to that of the Patron of Reading initiative:

Pentathlon is an extended partnership with Julia, who will provide five full days of workshops (in school) ideally one in each half term between November and July;

each workshop day will start with an assembly for all of KS2 / KS3 focusing on one of the five athletic elements of writing from the 'STAMP' list above;

the remainder of each day will be spent with Julia teaching workshops to individual classes (this may need to be adapted for schools with larger intakes), targeting a combination of the different 'STAMP' elements in each session;

a small group of children will have the opportunity to have lunch with Julia on each of her visits;

Julia will share with the children her progress on whatever she is currently writing, including offering them the possibility to read sections of her work in progress;

if any children wish to share their writing with Julia between workshop days, she is happy to give them encouragement and feedback to help them;

please contact Julia for fees and availability. Discounted rates are available for smaller schools, so please do mention this when you enquire.

Welcome to Julia Edwards Books!

Julia's regular writing workshops are also still on offer for schools wishing to integrate any of these into the Pentathlon programme. You can download her current workshop list here.

She is also happy to accommodate requests for workshops for able writers, small group sessions for struggling writers, and adding additional workshop days to the programme on a pro-rata basis. Please do say if you would like this.