Shortt Story Showdown

Year 4, 5 and 6 Writing Competition

I am thrilled to announce the incredible success of a recent writing competition for Years 4, 5 and 6, which was introduced at the beginning of this term. “Shortt Story Showdown” (as poorly named as it is!) was a true showcase of the immense writing talent of our students at Magill. Participants opted into the competition on a voluntary basis, and gave up their own time (including lunch time workshops at school) to develop and perfect their pieces of work.

The first challenge for the competition was title ‘Scenes from a Movie’, where our talented young writers showcased their creativity and storytelling skills to capture some famous movie scenes as if they were written for a novel. The students were challenged with not only vividly describing the scene of the movie clips they were shown, but weaving into it the emotion, mood, and relevant backstory so that the readers experience is maximised.

Each year level was allocated a different scene to portray. The Year 6’s were given the dramatic scene from The Lion King, where Scar betrays his brother Mufasa. This action packed, emotional moment, with its devastating climax, made for some incredibly engaging and moving pieces of work. The Year 5’s were tasked with writing the scene from the movie ‘Up’, where Carl’s plan to escape retirement living comes to fruition, as the helium balloons he had been attaching to his house launch it into the air. Lastly, the Year 4’s had to write about the moment in Toy Story where Buzz falls in spectacular fashion while trying to prove to Woody he can fly. A challenge for our Year 4s was that their reading audience needed to understand that Woody was right, and that Buzz is ‘accidentally’ flying, fooling only himself and the other toys. For context, each scene, and the timing markers that the writing had to capture, can be viewed as these links:

Year 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdypP_qOVI0 (until the 39 second mark)

Year 5: https://youtu.be/xVgxeuK7i90?t=42 (42 second mark to the 1:28 mark)

Year 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhVLgTsoMhQ&t=39s (from the 39 second mark)

After a long and enjoyable process of reading each entry and making some incredibly difficult decisions, I am excited to announce our winners for the Term 3 Challenge:

Year 6: Hugo Michael-Clark (F3)

Year 5: India Mollison (F14)

Year 4: Mia Chen (F9)

These budding authors have demonstrated an incredibly ability to transport us into the world of cinema with their vivid storytelling. We are immensely proud of their achievements. To recognise their efforts, each winner has received:

A $20 Dillons Bookshop voucher.
A $15 Kmart voucher.
A framed copy of their winning piece to adorn our classrooms for all to admire.
A nice new pacer pencil to keep the incredible writing flowing!

I can’t wait to see what each student will bring to all future challenges. Stay tuned for Term 4 challenge, which I am confident will be just as inspiring and imaginative as this one, hopefully with even more entries. Congratulations to all participants for their hard work.

A special congratulations to our three incredibly deserving winners. Please keep scrolling to read their outstanding entries.

Mike Shortt

Assistant Principal