Over the Autumn term students were encouraged to partake in the national Pearson competition ‘My Twist on a Tale’ alongside our internal competition at Baysgarth. The theme was ‘Our Tomorrow’ and required students to create an imaginative and creative piece, either a short story or a piece of poetry which explored their visions and views for the future of our world. We received some fantastic entries which showcased the talent we have here at Baysgarth! Our judges were once again challenged to identify the winners but after much deliberation, the top 3 were selected:

1st place went to Taya Brown with her short story titled “Winters of Our Tomorrow”

2nd place went to Kiana Cochrane with her description titled “Our Tomorrow”

3rd place went to Daisy Gray with her poem titled “Uncle Sam”

You can read their work below.

We were also overjoyed to learn that Taya’s entry won the national competition for the region of Yorkshire and the Humber! Taya’s entry has since been published in a book with the other regional winners as well as having an illustrated audio created of her short story which you can listen to here. Here is what we said when we found out:

We are absolutely over the moon for Taya, she is such a deserving winner; her story was beautiful! The way she used her words to convey such vivid images in her story was really carefully crafted. Taya is a talented writer who devours books, what a wonderful and happy event that she is now going to have her own story published. We are incredibly proud of her here at Baysgarth and hope that this will only instil the desire and confidence in her to write even more stories!

Partaking in a National Writing competition proved to be a successful one for the students of Baysgarth school. Taking inspiration from the Pearson ‘My Twist on a Tale- Everyday Heroes’ our students were tasked with creating their very own ‘Everyday Hero’ and then writing a short story about their act of generosity, selflessness or kindness. We received some inspiring entries and it was incredibly hard to narrow them down. Nevertheless, our top judges, Mr Briggs, Miss Driscoll and school governor Ellie Jarrett whittled down the entries to the best of the bunch.

1st place went to Hayden Money with his short story titled ‘A Glimmer of Faith’

2nd place went to Hollie Birch with her short story titled ‘One Day Everything Went Dark’

3rd place went to Emily Douthwaite with her short story titled ‘A Jump from Nerd to Popularity!’

In the early months of 2021 we were elated to learn that Hollie’s entry won the national competition for the region of Yorkshire and the Humber for the Pearson ‘My Twist on a Tale’ writing competition! Hollie’s entry has since been published in a book with the other regional winners and she was interviewed on regional radio station Viking FM. We are so incredibly proud of Hollie and her wonderful achievement!