Finding new and creative ways to engage students across different subjects and skills is a challenge faced by educators all over the world. Today we are pleased to share the announcement of a new literacy project, based on the much loved children’s book series, The Famous Five! As well as a fantastic way to stimulate creation and the development of literacy and other skills, there are some wonderful prizes to be won!

2017 marks the 75th anniversary of The Famous Five, Enid Blyton’s best-loved and phenomenally successful book series. To celebrate this landmark year, all 21 books in the Famous Five series are being re-released in May 2017 with brand new contemporary illustrations from rising star Laura Ellen Anderson.

As part of this, we invite all schools to take part in our exciting competition as a Literacy Project for your class or an after school club project. Everything you need is in the information below! We can’t wait to see your stories!

The Famous Five Sway Competition

As a Froebel-trained teacher, Enid Blyton knew just how to write the right book for children, at every stage of their reading development. Children who read her books go on to be critical and confident readers for pleasure, opening up a world of literature and life-long learning to them.

In light of this, Microsoft and Enid Blyton Entertainment have partnered to bring you this brilliant competition!

Enid Blyton wrote every Famous Five novel with a clear 5-step structure:

• Set up
• Journey
• Adventure
• Resolution
• Return home

We invite every Year 4 and Primary 5 class across the country to submit a Sway using those five steps, based on an adventure in an exciting location or a place of local interest (ie: Five Go To ……).

Over on the Microsoft Educator Community you can find further details about the competition, Enid Blyton sample extracts to share with your class, as well as the Sway below, which goes into greater detail about all aspects of the competition, the prizes, and some really useful tips on how to get started using Sway itself:

Why should you take part?

During the planning of this competition we’ve been in conversation with a number of educators and schools to get their views on the project and what impact it will have on their students. #MIEExpert James Protheroe from Darran Park Primary in Wales had this to say:

“My pupils are so excited for this! The Famous Five competition provides pupils with a unique opportunity to develop their reading and writing skills through using Sway in such an innovative way. It’s a brilliant way to get pupils following the adventures of the Famous Five and sharing their work with real audiences. We can’t wait to get started!”

We hope you all take a look at the Sway above, and also the Famous Five Sway competition page on the Microsoft Educator Community, and we look forward to what we are sure will be a fantastic project for you and your students.

Finally we’d like to leave you with some quick and interesting facts about Enid Blyton herself:

• Global sales of over 600 million books
• Published her first book in 1922 and has been in print ever since
• The most widely translated children’s author in the world
• The second most borrowed classic author in UK libraries
• Two Enid Blyton books are sold every minute in the UK
• The first author to trademark their signature
• Wrote over 800 stories averaging 13,000 words a day
• Enid Blyton is the bestselling children’s author of all time