Do you have a budding author in the making? Then here’s their chance to win their family a trip to Disney! Atom Learning has some fantastic prizes up for grabs with the 1st prize compiling of a trip to Disneyland Paris for a family of four, a stack of novels, an illustrated book cover for the story designed by a professional illustrator and £2,500 for your child’s school. There are 2nd and 3rd prizes up for grabs too in the Atom Learning Young Author Award 20022!

How to Enter the Atom Learning Young Author Award

Get your child to pick up a pen and get creative! The 2022 theme for the Atom Learning Young Author Award is “A day that changed the World”. Atom Learning want their young authors to write their own original story following this theme. They understand that the world is changing and this is having a massive impact on young people’s lives. This is your child’s opportunity to use their imagination to shape the world into how they think it should be.

Your child needs to be aged between 7 and 11. There are two categories; ages 7-9 and ages 10-11. Stories should be no longer than 500 words and it’s one entry per child. You can submit entries either as a word doc or PDF, or handwritten entries can upload a scan or photo of your story.

The competition is open now and closes on 31st August 2022. Full terms and conditions can be viewed here.

Enter here: The Atom Learning Young Author Award 2022

Why Creative Writing is great for kids

Creative writing is a great way for kids to express themselves. It also helps them develop strong reading and writing skills. Creative writing teaches children about the importance of words, their meanings and how they work together to create meaning in a sentence or paragraph. They learn about punctuation, grammar, sentence structure and more, which are essential skills for all future readers and writers.

How to write a good story

The judges are looking for:

• Engaging characters.
• A thought provoking message.
• Compelling plot leaving the reader thirsty to read more!

So with all that in mind, how do you write a good story?

A story is a sequence of events that happen to someone or something. It can be told in a few sentences or it can go on for pages. A story might be true, like the story of how you met your best friend. Or it might be made up, like the story of how you were captured by pirates and escaped with treasure.

Every good story has five basic parts: A beginning, a middle, an end, conflict and resolution.

The beginning is where you introduce the characters and setting. The middle is where all the important stuff happens – this is called the plot development or “rising action.” The end is when everything gets sorted out – this is called the “falling action.” Conflict is when things aren’t going well for your character and resolution is when they are. A beginning, middle, and end to a story is helpful for when you’re writing – you can know the order of events and know where the conflict happens in the story.

The most important part though is to use your imagination, have fun with your writing and enjoy the process.

More about Atom Learning

Atom Learning helps your child by boosting their performance across the core subjects of English, maths and science, or preparing them for 11+ grammar and independent senior school exams. All their learning resources are created by teachers that’s aligned to the National Curriculum and all major 11+ examination boards. There’s access to over 90,000+ questions, video tutorials, help sheets and recorded lessons – all designed to build learner confidence and knowledge.

Atom Learning’s adaptive technology identifies your child’s ability level, and their areas for improvement. Their content continues to adapt to fill learning gaps, leading
to constant progression and accelerated learning.