Author: ChanAtkins

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C Nov 3rd

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This week we’ve looked at personification, specifically when describing landscapes!

Monday

Monday Zoom Group: We started with reminding ourselves what personification is and had some examples of it being used specifically when describing landscapes. The children then had a go at writing their own descriptive landscape piece using personification techniques to really bring it alive! The results were amazing and they then got back to their ongoing stories for the Lakeside View project!

There was no CJS Monday club this week due to a staff day.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: We also discussed personification and used the examples and prompts to practice our skills. Amazing responses from everyone, well done!

Bransgore C of E School: Personification was a new concept for the youngest children in this group but they rose to the challenge beautifully and wrote some fantastic sentences! The results from everyone were of a very high standard and again we had lots of children lining up wanting to share their descriptive pieces!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Group: Amazing results in this group from the personification prompt and discussion. Again, everyone was super proud of their efforts and really noticed the difference it made to their writing! More progress on Lakeside View stories too!

Wednesday 8-11 Group: Personification was a new concept for some of the younger group and again they really rose to the challenge! I was very impressed with the personification sentences, descriptions and poems they all came up with!

Wednesday CJS Club: more fun with personification in landscapes with these guys and some stunning examples were written too! Some of the younger ones learnt about the technique for the first time and were really proud when they mastered it!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 20th October

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Creepy writing prompts and word-throwing!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: Lots of spooky writing prompts on offer today including ‘word-throwing’ from a story starter and lots of’ What If…’ scenarios. They also made progress with their Lakeside View stories!

Monday CJS Club: We did an activity as a group, ‘word-throwing’ with a story starter. The story starter was ‘I stepped into the darkness and…’ which was then followed by me calling out a random word every minute. The children can use the word, change the word slightly or ignore the word. We had such fantastic results from this session and every singe piece written fits perfectly into the Lakeside View project!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom group: This group mostly went for the ‘What If…’ scenarios which included ‘What if the darkness came and never left?’ and ‘What if you put on a mask for halloween and it would not come off?’ The results were suitably creepy from all!

Bransgore C of E Primary School Club: This group had the story starter and word-throwing activity and it went so well! Every single child wrote something suitable for the Lakeside View project and every single child was so proud of their work they wanted to stand and read it out! I was amazed by the amount written too!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: A perfectly creepy mix of responses to the Halloween themed prompts from these guys plus one Lakeside View story finished and another one very close to the end!

Wednesday 8-11 Group Zoom Group: These guys responded to the prompts beautifully and some also helped each other construct spooky spells and potions with some lively suggestions in the chat!

Wednesday CJS Club: Another wonderful word-throwing session! This group were also incredibly proud of their spooky writing and all of them are going in the Lakeside View book1

Have a great half-term everyone!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 13th October

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Scripts and/or comic books this week!

Monday

Monday Zoom group: This week the group’s have a choice of script-writing or comic-writing. Not a really deep dive into either format but more of a teaser and a bit of a play around. The Monday group had a mix of students wishing to write scenes for potential stage plays and comic books, and it was lovely to see the results. They also made progress on their on-going Lakeside View stories!

Monday CJS Club: A mix of plays and comics for these guys and here are some lovely examples to show you:

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: A perfect mix of scripts and comic books in this group and all were fantastic! Well done everyone!

Bransgore C of E Primary school Club: The same options for these guys and here are some of the results:

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: A mix of plays, comics and carrying on with Lakeside View stories from this group. We also had an option for trying to write something in the 4th person, is using ‘we’. Great work from all and as usual a fantastic commitment to seeing things through!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: Another nice mix of some doing play scripts, some choosing comics and some choosing to work on Lakeside View stories! Excellent!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were excited to have some choices today and we had another lovely mix of play scripts and comics going on!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 6th October

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Newspaper covers for school clubs, creating eerie and unsettling scenes for Zoom!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: Today we were looking at how you can create horror and tension by turning everyday and ordinarily pleasant scenes into something more unsettling and uneasy… We went through some tips such as using objects, using characters, using dialogue and using the senses to make a pleasant scene feel creepy. We had some prompts to get us started and the results were amazing! Well done all!

Monday CJS Club: Last week they worked so hard on their template poems that today they deserved a more relaxed and creative session. They were all given their newspaper covers and could decorate and design them any way they liked. I brought in pictures and cut out words and phrases to help inspire front covers in a magazine or newspaper style. We also used teabags to make the newspapers look old! These were amazing and it was a really fun session with all the children fully engaged and excited about putting their newspapers together.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom group: This group also had the tips on changing an ordinary scene into one that scares us and chose from the prompts, coming up with some seriously unsettling pieces! Well done everyone!

Bransgore C of E Primary School Club: This group got to design and decorate their newspaper/magazine covers today and had great fun in doing so. Here are some examples of their work so far.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom group: This group had great fun with the making a normal scene creepy task and prompts! The idea is to create a very ordinary scene such as a birthday party, or watching Tv, or walking the dog, and then use either objects, characters, dialogue or the senses to create an uneasy and unsettling atmosphere. These guys were fantastic at doing just that!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: The younger group never shy away from a challenge and they also had the same tips and prompts and could choose whether to create a funny or scary scene using the very everyday setting/scenario. Their responses were also wonderful!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were excited to get stuck into decorating and designing their ongoing newspapers today and as you can see, the results are amazing!!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 29th September

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This week we celebrated National Poetry Day!

Monday

Monday Zoom Group: We had a selection of poetry challenges today all from resources sent from National Poetry Day! The theme for National Poetry Day is ‘play’ and one of the things we started with was trying to make a group poem about play. Everyone added their thoughts on play to the chat, such as what they liked to play, used to play, favourite toys and games and so on. We then put this together into a poem and here it is:

Play is…

Cat and mouse,
playground,
the outdoors, a wild amusement park.
getting really competitive
with your sister while playing board games
films, friends,
parties,
books, board games
old toys, new toys
imaginary games
hide and seek,
Tall trees, grass stains
playing is
like being in another world
being on an adventure
like living in another world
until you have to go
swinging higher and higher
playing with your dog
and it getting a bit too boisterous
hiding behind a bush
knowing it’s just a game but it’s still terrifying!

Christchurch Junior School: We worked with two types of poetry today – one was the group poem, with children adding words and phrases about play to a large sheet of paper, and then we worked through the template poem ‘I Am..’ We had some great results from this and a mix of personal poems and poems from the POV of characters or creatures. Here is their group poem:

Play is Fun

Play is fun
monopoly and wordsearch
tag with friends
games with family
play is exciting
Roblox and video games
running in the playground
and hide and seek
play is sharing
games with pets
football and skipping
play is happiness

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom group: This group had a go at the group poem based on play and also worked their way through the National Poetry Day resources and challenges. Here is their group poem:

Playing Is…

Playing is like being disconnected from the real world
Play is a way of telling a story
Playing outside near the road
playing family,
making adverts for random objects,
manhunt, and running,
hiding and making dens
climbing trees in the forest
playing pirates, making stuff,
painting or moulding something utterly indescribable
with clay or mud
pretending a stick is a sword

Bransgore c of E Primary School: Bransgore did their template I Am poem last week so this week they tried two forms of found poetry AND helped to write a group poem about play. For found poetry we had cut up words and phrases to move around and create a poem from, and also a book title challenge. With this, you simply write down as many book titles as you can find around you then start circling any that have similar themes. Finally, construct a poem from the book titles and add more words if you need to. Here is their group poem about play:

I Play…

I play all day
rock, paper, scissors
tag, no returns
ball games – what goes up must come down
Lego – build it up and knock it down
with Duplo, and Frozen
and a solar-powered robot
I play Mums and Dads
and Teachers and Schools
and musical instruments to make a noise
video games make me feel it’s my happy time
and I feel relaxed, I feel fine
I feel free
this is my time

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: More National Poetry Day resources for this group today and also another group poem based on the play theme!

Life’s A Game To Me

Life’s a game to me
the swings on the playpark
down the street, climbing trees
sprinting and being stuck in the mud
shut in cupboards for hide and seek
playing in my daydreams.

Life’s a game to me
You’re chasing me
Now I am the chaser
I cannot catch you
Yet you keep running
Everything is different now

Life’s a game to me
I am your child
You are my mother
And we live in a tree
Sandboxes and mud pits
You’re bored now so we change once more

Life’s a game to me
Dolls and toys
Robots and dinosaurs
Lend me your ear
We’ll have a blast
Trust me here, lets make it last

Life’s a game to me
And when all’s said and done
I’ll write it down when I’m older
Engines powering huge machines
Generate your own world
Let your imagination make your story

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: This group also did a fab job with all the National Poetry Day challenges and here is their group poem!

Playing is fun

Acting, dancing, singing and laughing
I’ve got squishmallows to squish
I sleep with about 1000 cuddly toys
play schools with them
happy memories attached to them
got one at a fair
traded with friends
grandad helped me buy one from a gift shop
Playing with friends, playing with toy horses
LOL dolls and barbies
Football and sports
Sailing and bike riding
Whittling is fun
And mud kitchen and potions
Tent building
Gaming
Toys that have another use
Lego building
Dressing up and drawing
Playing is fun

Christchurch Junior School Wednesday Club: These guys did the template I Am poem today and lots chose to do it from the POV of a creature, which made for some deliciously dark poems! Here is their group poem:

Happiness is
Happiness is
running, jumping
outside games
tag and netball
sports like football
Happiness is
Roblox and 99 Nights
skipping and tennis
drawing and creating things
drama and theatre
happiness is
designing and drawing
board games and toys
card games indoors
fun times with friends

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 22nd September

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Finished articles and an ‘I Am’ Poem!

Monday

Monday Zoom group: Article writing and template ‘I Am’ poems on the go today with this group! We also had a fun book recommendation discussion!

Monday CJS: Finished articles today for this club. Here are the results of their hard work!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom group: This group finished their articles last week so were concentrating on poetry today – a mix of the ‘I Am…’ poetry template we’ve been working with and also narrative poetry. For the narrative or ‘storytelling’ poetry we had some prompts to choose from in order to form mini story/poems. Excellent work from all!

Bransgrore C of E Primary School: This group also finished their articles last week so today we were filling in the ‘I Am…’ poetry template. They really got into this, often asking if they could change a line or two of the ‘instructions’ that start each line off. Many did beautiful personal poems about who they are while some chose to do theirs from the POV of a fictional character or creature! Images below!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom group: A mix of template ‘I Am…’ poetry and narrative poetry prompts for this group. Also some progress on amazing Lakeside View stories!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom group: These guys finished template ‘I Am…’ poems last week so moved onto narrative poems today with some brilliant results!

Wednesday CJS Club: Articles were finished and some of them moved onto found poetry! They’ll do the template poetry next week. Here are a few examples of some wonderful found poetry. There are many ways to do found poetry but today we used cut up words and phrases to create poems and/or inspire ideas!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 15th September

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Article writing for everyone!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We carried on with the articles we started last week! Great work everyone.

Monday CJS Club: Fantastic to be back with this club today, with a mix of familiar faces and new ones. We got started on article writing! They could write real articles or made up ones, and could use picture prompts and headline suggestions to help them. They made a terrific start as you can see from the images, and we will finish these off next week!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: Lots of finished articles in this group today, well done everyone! We then moved onto a poetry prompt. ‘I Am…’ poetry templates were posted in the chat for students to respond to. The template involved three stanzas, each starting with a line such as ‘I am…’ or ‘I hope…’ The first ‘I am’ line is repeated at the start and end of each stanza. These can be filled in from a personal perspective or from the pov of a character! We had a mix of responses and all were absolutely wonderful!

Bransgore C of E Primary School: Today the children finished the articles they started last week and as you can see from the pictures, they are very eye catching! From lost dogs, and shoplifters, to portals to cake land and warring islands, these news stories are extremely imaginative! Well done everyone!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: A mix of finishing articles and trying the ‘I Am…’ poetry template from this group today. Lots of work shared and a bit more progress on the Lakeside View projects too! Fantastic!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: These guys finished their articles last week so today tried the ‘I Am’ poetry template, using their Lakeside View characters for the POV! These were excellent and are definitely going in the book!

Wednesday CJS Club: Lovely to be back with this bunch today! They started their mini articles and had fun deciding what their front page news would be! The images below show how hard they worked on these today!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 8th September

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Zoom clubs and Bransgore Primary School club were back this week!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We launched our new topic which is creating ‘newspapers’ from now until Christmas. The idea is we will do a different activity each week and gradually create a body of work we will then organise into a newspaper or magazine. We started with articles today and will carry this on next week. We discussed what is needed in a newspaper story, such as the heading, by-line, introductory paragraph, the main story, conclusion, and extras such as reader’s comments and pictures/photos. We had some possible headlines as prompts and there was also an option to tie the newspaper stories in with our on-going Lakeside View project!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: This group were introduced to the new topic and made a great start on articles today. Some wrote random articles on topics of their choice and some are linking theirs to Lakeside View. We will carry on with these next week!

Bransgore C of E Primary School Club: It was lovely to be back at Bransgore today! We kicked off our newspaper topic and everyone chose a topic and a headline, as well as some wonderful pictures to inspire the news reports. We had a couple finished, which is amazing, but most will be finished next week. Here are a few of them in progress!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Also starting with article writing and picking from headline prompts or making their own. Some of the group decided to link their articles in with our Lakeside View project, which is brilliant!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: Introducing article writing to the younger group and with great results! Headlines and bylines were used, as well as great stories, most of which linked in with Lakeside View!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 14th July

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Story starters, writing prompts, poetry and town stories!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: Today was our last session before the summer holidays so we had lots of options to choose from, including various visual prompts to respond to, story starters or just working on the town stories. Lovely work from all as always and a great discussion in general about writing and plotting!

Monday CJS Club: Progress on town stories with another starting to be typed up. We also had poetry and story prompts on offer for people to choose from. Great work from all!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Same options for these guys but everyone chose to make progress with their town story which is great news, as we are aiming to publish this new book in October! This was also our last session until September.

Bransgore Primary School: Last session for these guys today and we had various options on offer to finish off the term. Well done to all and have a lovely summer holiday!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Also the last session for these guys, everyone made progress on their town stories which are shaping up to be truly spectacular from this group! Well done guys and have a fantastic summer!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: Another last session before the summer holidays and though they had prompts to choose from, they all decided to work on their town stories. Some of these stories are linking up with each other too, which is really lovely! Well done to all and have a lovely summer!

Wednesday CJS Club: A celebratory last session with this wonderful group! We wrote a collaborative town project story by passing it around the class and everyone made progress with their own stories too. Have a wonderful summer you lovely lot!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 7th July

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Flash fiction prompts and progress on our ‘town stories’ project!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We started today with a flash fiction challenge. They had three options: writing their current town story in as least words as possible, writing a future story idea in as least words as possible or rewriting a well known tale or story in as least words as possible! After we had progress on town stories!

Monday CJS Club: We had flash fiction prompts also but most made progress with their town stories. We had another story typed up and finished and another one in the process of being typed up. Brilliant!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom club: We started with flash fiction prompts and these were excellent and mostly shortened versions of the bigger stories they are working on! Then we made progress on the town stories themselves.

Bransgore Primary After School Club: More progress on town stories with another one finished and typed up! These guys have shown a real enthusiasm and commitment to getting their stories done!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom club: Flash fiction prompts and progress on town stories in this group today! These stories are shaping up to be very special and I can’t wait to share them with you when this next book project is done! Well done everyone!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom club: We started with the flash fiction challenge and then moved on to writing more of our town stories.

Wednesday CJS Club: Flash fiction options for these guys too and more town stories finished and typed up! Excellent!