Tag: children’s writing

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 8th December

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Character games on Zoom and a mix of Christmas writing and crafts at schools!

Monday

Monday 11 Plus Zoom Group: Today the challenge was everyone had to create a character and add a bio for them into the chat. We then challenged ourselves to write a ‘blind’ story, (in other words, we all write something without knowing what the others had written and then paste it all together) using these characters This was a lot of fun and the story actually made sense!

Monday CJS Club: Various Christmas themed activities were on offer today, including a host of Christmas story starters, mini books they could do anything they liked with and lots of Christmassy images and phrases to create a story or poem from! They had a lot of (excitable!) fun putting various books and ideas together. I forgot to take photos but I wish I had as they were all amazing!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom group: Only a small group today but we had a lot of fun with characters too. We each created one and put them in the chat. They could be written bios or pictures. We then spun a wheel and all got allocated one randomly which we had to write something in response to. This was so much fun and although it felt a little weird writing for someone else’s character for a bit, it then flowed beautifully and some great pieces were created!

Bransgore C of E Primary School Club: Our last session with this group before Christmas so they were busy making Christmas themed bookmarks with Christmas themed poems written on them to take home as a gift for a loved one. A host of beautiful bookmarks were created!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: More character fun in this session and lots of them joined in to add a host of wacky characters to the chat. We then allocated them randomly and had a lot of fun responding with pieces of writing!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: Sam activity for this group and again, a lot of fun was hat! Some brilliant characters were put into the chat, including my favourite, ‘Bobeter’ the chicken! Some highly amusing mini stories were written for these eclectic characters!

Wednesday CJS Club: More crafty Christmassy activities and it’s fair to say everyone in this group went mad for the mini books and the images and words I’d brought in! I did remember to take photos so check them out below to see what wonderful writing and creativity was displayed. From stories, to poems, to recipe books, comics, adverts and more! Absolutely brilliant!

Thursday

Burton C of E Primary School: Our last session here before Christmas so this group were writing their Christmas poems and decorating their bookmarks! Fantastic effort. See you all soon!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 10th March

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

What have we been up to this week? Character dynamics, recipes and spells for Zoom clubs and finishing junk journals for the school clubs!

Welcome parents, carers and young writers. Every week I will post here what we have been up to in writing clubs. The clubs are categorised by day so if your child attends a Tuesday club, for example, simply scroll down to Tuesday to see what we covered this week!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We looked at character dynamics this week – what are they, why are they important and tips for applying them to your story. Once we had discussed character dynamics and gone through the tips and advice, the group had several options for how to try them out. They could write a scene for their own on-going story which showed some character dynamics, or they could write a random scene to practice utilising them, or they could use one of the prompts offered to get going. We had some lovely examples from everyone and it was a great topic to explore!

Monday CJS Club: This week we finished off the wonderfully creative junk journals and the kids took them home. It was lovely to see some children already writing in theirs and I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing how vastly different they all are! A lot of fun was had making these and I hope the young writers make good use of them at home!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Character dynamics for this group and it was their suggestion to look into the topic, so thank you for that! We had the same discussion and examples of what we mean by character dynamics and we also made progress on the first edit of our finished group story.

Tuesday Bransgore C of E Primary: More finishing and sending home of junk journals! Lots more pages added, using scrap and recycled paper, as well as envelopes, comic pages and so on. It’s been great seeing how inventive they’ve been with this!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: I gave this group a choice of looking at character dynamics or doing recipes/spells like the younger group are doing and they all chose to stick with character dynamics. There was a mixed response of new bits of writing and exploring character dynamics between the characters in their own stories. I’ve known this group since they were a younger group and it’s been amazing and exciting to see how much they have progressed and matured with their writing!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: The younger group have been fantastic, because most weeks they’ve been doing the same topics and work as the older groups and they’ve risen to the challenge every time! I asked them a few weeks ago for some ideas they would like to try and one was writing recipes to share. We decided to tackle this in a few ways. They could share real recipes, which meant including the ingredients and the method in the chat for everyone to see, and they could make up crazy, silly, disgusting recipes too! They obviously had a lot of fun with this! We then talked about how recipes are very similar to spells and potions and some of them moved on to that afterwards. A lot of fun!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys also finished off their journals and took them home. An amazing variety of journals for all sorts of purposes, they should be very proud of the effort they have put in and the enthusiasm they have shown!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 24th February

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

What did we get up to this week? Different storytelling formats for Zoom clubs and junk journals for the school kids!

Welcome parents, carers and young writers. Every week I will post here what we have been up to in writing clubs. The clubs are categorised by day so if your child attends a Tuesday club, for example, simply scroll down to Tuesday to see what we covered this week!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: It was lovely to be back together after a week off for half-term and we got stuck straight into a new topic. Different ways to tell stories! We all know about choosing a tense and a point of view, but what about other formats we can use to tell a story? Such as letters, diaries, blog posts, emails or news reports? We started with a chat about books we’ve read that fall under this category (epistolary stories…) and several members of the group enthusiastically talked about books they loved. I mentioned House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and a few people suggested Holly Jackson’s Good Girl’s Guide To Murder series. Both great examples! We started today with two options. One: pick a photo prompt and write the news story to go with it
Two: write a news story to narrate a part of your own on-going story

We had some fantastic responses to this and everyone was happy to share, which was lovely. Well done everyone!

Monday CJS Club: For the next couple of weeks we are going to be making junk journals in school! We started by discussing the difference between a diary and a journal and talked about some journaling examples such as a nature journal, memory journal or travel journey. I explained that a junk journal is made from junk and recycled bits and bobs and can be anything they want it to be. We started today by first creating a ‘blind bag’ or ‘surprise bag’. This was partly to get them into a creative mood and get them thinking about possible themes for their journals. The surprise bags were a big hit and it was brilliant to see how differently they tackled them! You create a little envelope style ‘bag’ with a piece of paper and then decorate it however you like. As you can see from the examples below, they were very varied in design and purpose! Some children, for example, wanted to focus on nature, so as well as decorating the bag they also wrote tiny little poems and drew pictures to put inside. One child created a bag of games to play when bored! Another was designed as a ‘top secret’ bag full of secrets! Next week they will design their journal’s front and back cover and then can start adding fun pages over the next few weeks!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom club: A great session today with this group. A few of them chose to write a news report based on the picture prompts offered while another member of the group wanted to start a new story and decided to start the story with a newspaper report about a missing person. We have tackled article writing in the past and it was lovely to see them all remember things like an attention grabbing headline followed by a sub-title or lead, followed by the story itself. Fantastic!

Bransgore C of E School club: These guys were thrilled by the idea of making junk journals and jumped straight into making surprise bags first. We had a really varied selection of bags, including jokes, ideas, writing prompts and even dares! They also helped me put some finishing touches to my own junk journal which I plan to put writing prompts and ideas in, plus the little notes and drawings I often get given! Here are some examples of their surprise bags today.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: The older Wednesday group got stuck into news report style stories today, using a selection of picture prompts to inspire ideas. We also discussed epistolary stories and what they involve, giving examples such as Holly Jackson’s Good Girl’s Guide To Murder series, House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski and more. We had some wonderful examples from everyone with some very enticing news stories relayed!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: For some of this group it was their first time discussing epistolary stories and learning how to craft a news report. We shared some top tips, such as creating an eye-catching headline and using clear and concise language. They all did so well! Most chose to use the picture prompts to help them craft a story and one child decided to use her own toys to create exciting news stories from! Well done everyone!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were excited to create and decorate their surprise or ‘blind’ bags in preparation for creating junk journals over the next few weeks. Lots of them already knew what a junk journal was and they all fantastic ideas for their bags today, such as dare bags, worry bags, bag to keep stickers in and kindness bags! Here are some examples.