Daily archives: 5th May 2023


Collaborative Writing

We’ve been trying something new in Class 4 this week. Making use of the collaborative features in Microsoft Word, the entire class has come together to re-write a story inspired by our class novel: “Trash” by Andy Mulligan. Some of us were assigned as writers, others as proof-readers and others as editors. The result was amazing (and a little chaotic) as our story came to life at breakneck speed. Words were appearing from all over the classroom as people wrote, edited and corrected as a whole. Below is the story we ended up with, in full, for you to enjoy at home!

I jumped off the train before it reached the platform. You don’t want to get caught by the station guards so we needed to get off as soon as soon we could. The train must have been moving faster than I thought; as soon as I hit the ground I fell over and rolled in the grass. Gardo almost ran over me! I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could and noticed some station boys, who looked pretty mean, standing at the far end of the platform.

 When I first saw them, they looked all tough; the kind of boys that would fight a guard but that wouldn’t end well. In the corner of my eye, I saw Rat hand over a 20, then 50, then another 20. I didn’t know how long we had to get the thing in the locker, I hoped it would be at least 15 minutes, or more. It looked like Gardo was getting ready to fight, as he was gripping onto his sharp hook. Rat turned around, steadily walked towards us and started talking to us. He said we had five minutes to get the thing in the locker, and we had to be quick!    

As I was walking through the crowed station, I felt Gardo gripping my wrist extremely hard! Rat was picking up a pace and was giving us a signal. I didn’t know what it meant but Gardo certainly did. I think it meant down here. Then Rat sneaked down some bendy stairs and we were in a grey small room. The pipes were wiggly and I saw Gardo looking around anxiously. Then Rat went round a corner for a while. Then I saw Rat reappear. 

Rat was quick to open the locker and to get the mysterious thing in the black door which we did not recognise. We wanted to find out that’s for sure. Rat turned to see if anyone was looking, without thinking he grabbed the black “mystery thing” and ran. I asked, 

“What were you thinking?! You could have got us caught!” The surprising thing was he just ignored me. Then I started to get angry, I thought if it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t have got the bag! He just ignored me, again.  

Sprinting through the station, Gardo was watching around like a CCTV camera making sure Raphael was safe. There were no cops in this area with this mystery item in this bag in Rats clothes.  Suddenly, lots of cops were covering the crowded station but that didn’t stop Rat slithering through the crowd. They didn’t get caught so they ran home.