Tag: Non-Fiction

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 24th November

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Unreliable narrators on Zoom and creating our own adverts in school clubs!

Monday

Monday 11 Plus Zoom Group: This week via Zoom we are looking at unreliable narrators. What is an unreliable narrator, what different types of unreliable narrator exist in fiction and why they are sometimes used. We then set some writing prompts to explore the mindset of unreliable narrators! A great response from the first club of the week with members choosing from the list of prompts and exploring their own unreliable narrator. We also discussed how they have used unreliable narrators before without perhaps realising it!

CJS Monday Club: In school clubs this week we are trying to finish off the newspapers they have been working on since September. This week we are creating and designing our own adverts. It could be for something that already exists or something completely made up! We had a lovely selection of ads from them. Have a look at a few examples below!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom Group: more work on unreliable narrators for this group. Some great pieces were written, including the POV of a cat who witnesses a murder, and the POV of a very young child in danger. Great work!

Bransgore C of E Primary School Club: this group also enjoyed creating their own adverts for their newspapers today as you can see from the selection below!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom group: More work on unreliable narrators. What is an unreliable narrator and how can we spot one? The group did a great job responding to the prompts and we also realised how many of them have ongoing stories with unreliable narrators at the helm! There was one particularly clever and chilling piece written from the POV of a young child who does not realise she has witnessed a crime. Truly chilling!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: We added a Christmassy vibe to the unreliable narrator topic and the younger group could choose between arguing elves, a pet who hears all the Christmas secrets and arguments among siblings among other things. They did a great job responding to the topic!

Wednesday CJS Club: Here is another fun selection of adverts created this week!

Thursday

Burton C of E Primary School: Only the second session with these guys and they have been doing a fantastic job creating mini newspapers/magazine. We’ve got ongoing comic book strips, mini news articles, adverts, puzzle pages, stories, poems and even songs among their work so far! Absolutely brilliant! I’ll post some examples next week.

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 30th June

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This week we published our anthology!!

The big news this week is the publication of our anthology, The World You Gave Us! It was written over the course of a year by young people who attend after school or Zoom writing clubs with Chasing Driftwood, and contains poetry, flash fiction, short stories and creative non-fiction. The children were so amazing in putting this together that we are already onto our next project which we hope to publish in October! Grab your copy of The World You Gave Us on the link below!

https://amzn.eu/d/dbFRecS

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: We started with poetry prompts today, aimed at creating poems based on their current ‘town project’ stories. They could also write any poem they wanted. We had various poetry starters to get ideas flowing and we also looked at how to write limericks. Great responses from everyone then onto making more progress on the town stories!

Monday CJS Club: They had the option of poetry prompts or carrying on with their town stories. Some are now starting to type their stories up on the laptop, which is amazing to see. This project is already coming together so nicely! Well done to all.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Great responses in this club to the poetry prompts. Most decided to write poems based on their town ideas. We are saving lots of these to add to the book! More progress on town stories too!

Bransgore Primary Club: Progress on town stories with one now completed, edited and typed up and another started on the laptop, while everyone else involved in the project wrote more of their stories.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Mostly working on town stories today but also one member of the group wrote the end of a long collaborative story started a year ago in this club! They have all taken turns writing it over a year and it is finally finished! Lots of editing to do now, but wow! What commitment!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: Half the group decided to concentrate on town story progress and half decided to write poems based on their stories or to go in their stories. These were fantastic!!

Wednesday CJS Club: There was a bit of poetry going on but most wanted to make more progress on their town stories. Another one was finished and started to be typed up, and a few more are creeping towards the finish line!

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.