Tag: creative-writing

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 26th January

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Story planning with post-it notes in school and ‘quick everyday writes’ prompts for Zoom! Plus our first ‘Dark Club’ Zoom session!

Monday

CJS Monday Club: Today this group could either carry on any stories/poems started in the last few weeks from our ‘quick everyday writes’ prompts or they could make progress with their rescue dog stories for the Bournemouth Writing Festival competition. But we started with a quick story planning activity which really got them thinking about how to structure and plan a story. Everyone had six post-it notes but had to put three aside to start with. On three they had to write the beginning, middle and end of a story in quick note form. We talked about how helpful The Three Act Structure is in story planning. For example, Act 1 is the beginning of the story where you introduce a character and their world. Act 2 is the middle of the story where you make something happen and give the character a problem they cannot ignore. Act 3 is the end of the story where you resolve the problem. After everyone had written three notes, I then showed them how to interject three extra notes to provide more detail. We had some wonderful results from this. many of them said they now knew how to write their story better and many started stories because of the activity! Here are a few of their memo-note story plans:

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: These guys had the following prompts to discuss and respond to:

  • Write about the happiest sound in the world
  • Why do you write? How do you feel when you write?
  • What does it feel like to have a head full of ideas?
  • What is the one thing you always wish you were doing?

Some of them were also interested in the memo note planning technique I’m showing the school clubs this week so I talked them through that.

Bransgore C of E Primary School: These guys planned their stories today using the memo note technique, first coming up with three basic points of a story, start, middle and end, and then adding more detail. Fantastic! Here are a few of their plans:

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Group: This group had the writing prompt choices to go through and we also ran through the memo note planning technique. There was progress made on on-going projects too!

Wednesday 8-11 Group: The younger group seem to be really enjoying the quick writing prompts each week, with most of them doing more than one each time! We also had a look at the memo note planning technique and one member of the group decided to use this to plan her next story!

Wednesday CJS Group: With this group we discussed the memo note planning technique and everyone had a go at planning a story this way. Lots of them then went back to stories for the Bournemouth Writing Festival competition! Here are a few of their story plans:

Thursday

January ‘Dark’ club Session: This is a new monthly Zoom club for young writers interested in the darker genres such as horror, sci-fi, fantasy, crime, dystopia and post-apocalyptic. We will be meeting once a month at the end of the month to explore these genres and look at some famous authors who wrote in them. The aim is to learn more about the darker genres of writing and make progress with stories! Our first session went really well. We discussed various genres and what readers might expect from them, we looked at writing advice from Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 and tried his activity for writing a dark story which involves writing a list of ten things you love and ten things you hate then using some of that passion in a story. It was great fun and I am looking forward to the next one!

Burton C of E Primary School: Today at Burton I introduced the memo note story planning technique and as you can see from the photos below they enjoyed having a go at this! Some great story ideas evolved from the planning and some ongoing stories got a boost too. We also enjoyed using the feather and ink pen set, plus the fountain pen and my laptop to write with! Well done everyone, excellent work!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 13th January

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Making weekly writing books and responding to prompts!

Monday

Monday CJS Club: Great to be back with the CJS Monday club after the Christmas break. We kicked off by making our new weekly writing books. I was really impressed with this group as they did not have a session last week which meant making the books AND responding to our first prompt, what would you do, where would you go if you were invisible? These guys did so well and we had a wonderful response to the prompt with a mixture of stories, creative non-fiction and even poetry! Here are some pictures of the books they’ve made to write in this term.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: Today we discussed the benefits of using writing tools such as pen and paper over screens, and then responded to another choice of writing prompts. These prompts can be responded to any way they like whether it’s non-fiction or fiction, poetry or short story. The prompts for Zoom groups this week were:

If today was a colour what colour would it be and why?

What would you do if you knew there would be no consequence?

What is something that you will never understand?

Write about a song that is linked to a special memory

Bransgore C of E Primary: Lovely to be back with these guys today! They also enjoyed making their new writing books and responding to the invisibility prompt! Here are some pictures of their books.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: We also had a discussion about writing tools and the benefits of handwriting, then responded to our next set of prompts! Great work from all!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: Another discussion about writing tools and the cognitive benefits of using pen and paper, followed by more wonderful responses to the prompts.

CJS Wednesday Club: These guys made their writing books last week so today we could get stuck into our first writing prompt! What would you do, and where would you go if you were invisible? What an impressive response from everyone! Mostly poems, which was lovely, but also some stories on the go. Fantastic!

Thursday

Burton C of E Primary: This group also made their writing books last week so today we could fully focus on our first prompt about the power of invisibility. We had a lovely mix of poems about invisibility, stories, non-fiction and comic strips! Lovely work from everyone, well done!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 5th January

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Welcome back and happy new year!

Not all of out writing clubs were back yet this week but here’s what we kicked off with the ones who were…

Tuesday

11 Plus Zoom Group: We kicked off our new topic this week which is ‘everyday quick writing’. What is it, what does it involve and why is it important? After discussing what quick everyday writing is (essentially small bursts of routine writing in any style or format) we had four writing prompts to choose from. The prompts were creative non-fiction but they could choose to respond with fiction if they wanted and we had a lovely mix of both!

Wednesday

11 Plus Zoom Group: This group also started the everyday quick writing topic and again, we had a wonderful mix of responses to prompts which were creative non-fiction, or fiction. A wonderful start to a new term!

8-11 Zoom Group: really lovely work from the younger group today. They seemed really pleased with the topic and again, a lovely mix of creative non-fiction and fiction responses were written! fantastic!

CJS Wednesday club: Wonderful to be back with this group today and they are also doing the quick everyday writing topic. The only difference was they had to make their writing books first! They could choose their covers and there were pages of paper on offer including, lined, plain, coloured and squared. They had treasury tags to hold all the pages together and used cut up words and phrases to decorate their covers. They then started allocating pages for different things such as ideas, doodles, or characters… here are a few examples of their books so far!

Thursday

Burton C of E Primary School: Finished the week off with these guys and they were all very keen to make their new writing books. We will start writing in them next week! Here are a few of their books so far…

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 3rd February

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What did we get up to this week? Creative Non-Fiction!

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

This week we tackled creative non-fiction. This is partly because I am specifically looking for creative non-fiction pieces for the anthology we are putting together.

Monday Zoom Club – They tackled several creative non-fiction writing prompts including, write a letter to someone in power about something that you want to change / Write about an unusual and/or memorable event in your community /Share a memory of a perfect day/ reflect on a time you surprised yourself / Write about an unusual hobby or interest and why it fascinates you/Reflect on an instance where you found beauty in an unexpected place / Share your thoughts on tech advances and their impact on society.

This was a little bit tricky and I think it’s because as writers, we are often so used to making things up that it’s a little harder when we are asked to write about things that are true. We had some wonderful responses though, including a very powerful poem, a very angry letter about traffic, and some lovely family stories and memories which had been perfectly fictionalised and presented as engaging little stories! Well done everyone!

Monday CJS Club – I offered three creative non-fiction prompts and they were: write a letter to someone in power about something you want to change/ write a story about a memory or experience you have had / describe a perfect day

Again, this was a bit tricky when they are so used to story writing but I encouraged them to view it as writing a fictionalised version of something that is true. We had a few letters and some lovely memories too! There are some examples below.

Tuesday

Tuesday Zoom Club : The Tuesday group also had the same creative non-fiction prompts as the other Zooms this week. They did really well, approaching it with curiosity and enthusiasm. We had some wonderful happy memories described from one writer,

Bransgore C of E Primary School: These guys showed a lot of enthusiasm for the creative non-fiction prompts which was very much appreciated! Everyone had a go and we had some very angry letters aimed at powerful people and expressing genuine concerns, we had non-fiction poems, true stories and a lot more. Well done to you all because you all listened and responded beautifully! Here are some of the things they produced:

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus group: Another wonderful response to the creative non-fiction prompts1 A very well argued response to the benefits and drawbacks of AI in the creative environment, plus another very passionate essay on the effect of technology on people, particularly children. Amazing!

Wednesday 8-11 group: This group tackled the same creative non-fiction prompts and were more than willing to give it a go. We had a poem, a letter, a memory of a beautiful day, and a piece about what things inspire them to write.

Wednesday CJS group: Well done everyone for having a go at creative non-fiction this week! Again, we had some wonderful letters addressed to people in power, we had some non-fiction and very educational poems, we had a list of things someone is looking forward to (and not) about being a teenager one day, a few fun true stories and some letters to Taylor Swift! Fantastic. Here are a few examples.