On Tuesday we were thrilled to have a visit from children’s author Sam Sedgman. Sam gave us an amazing talk about his creative writing process and some incredibly interesting facts about how time is measured. Our Year 7’s were totally enthralled and engaged with his insights into the workings of ‘Big Ben’ and the secret tunnels around the Houses of Parliament. They now also know how to celebrate their birthdays twice in one year and how to jump backwards and forwards in time!
Ms Galvin
LRC & 6th Form Centre Manager
On the 19th of November 2024, we had the privilege to meet the author of The Clockwork Conspiracy and co-writer of the Adventures on Train Series, which involves the book The Highway Falcon Thief, best-selling book and winner of the Children Book Awards 2020.
The Year 7s and Book Club members at Tiffin had the wonderful experience of meeting phenomenal author, Sam Sedgmen who shared with us not only things about his book, but his incredible wit as well. Through jokes and audience engagement, we learnt so many new things about clocks, time and science – a very memorable experience! As one example, Sam called two audience members for a small but suspenseful game to get us in the mood of measuring time. The two competitors were tasked to close their eyes and count 20 seconds. The closest was 19.5 seconds out of 20 seconds. We then used a pendulum, counting 20 seconds with the pendulum and a stopwatch. The pendulum got 20.25. This showed how unreliable human counting was and why we rely so much on time in our day to day lives.
He shared his own personal experiences and his inspiration for writing books along with many tips for becoming an author. Lots of us were clearly inspired and found that they might want to become an author in the future and, if they did, they would definitely know how to start with Sam’s superior guidance.
At the end of the talk we had the chance to ask questions, most of which were very hard, but through Sam Sedgman’s infallible experience, he managed to answer them all to length, in which we had no trouble understanding. After that he generously took a photo with us and signed our books, along with a generous bookmark and a clock themed stamp!
Alexander C (8HCH)
