The Write a Book in a Day competition commences in May each year and is a large fundraising event for the Kids Cancer Project. The competition involves teams of 5 to 10 members who raise funds and participate in a 12-hour writing session in which a children’s book is created based on set parameters. The books are published and distributed through hospitals to children receiving cancer treatment.

This year over 1,007 teams were involved, from 378 schools and writing groups across Australia. Teams competed in four different levels starting in Primary School (Grades 5 and 6) and working through to open teams of adults. Among them were two teams from the Nagle Year 9 Enhanced English program. Our writing day was on Thursday 17 September, from 8 am to 8 pm. It was a very different competition writing day to previous years with all groups having to compete remotely – communicating over Google Meet and Google Docs. It was a day that challenged students in various ways but particularly in terms of their ability to work together as a team, work to a time frame, and work creatively whilst incorporating set parameters.

The competition winners were announced on the Thursday 12 November and the standard of entries was incredible. Whilst Nagle students were not amongst the winners, the two teams managed to raise $4,595 for the Kids Cancer Project which is a fantastic effort (and a new school record) and their two created stories – Golden Trap and Peter’s Spark – will be distributed to the sick children. The following students are congratulated for their involvement: Daniel Worley, Braidan Wylie, Jessie Forster, Crystal Williams, Brylee McMahon, Jessica Bradley, Joshua Carter, Chinela Otuonye, Emily Shenton, Tehya Morrison, Milly Lucetta, Jess Robinson, and Sabastian Etheridge

Thank you to everyone who supported the fundraiser and our students. Next year we hope to be involved again. Keen readers and writers who are going into year 9 in 2021 may wish to speak to their English teacher to express an interest in being involved in the Enhanced English program.