Tag: poem

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 29th September

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

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 30th June

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

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 27th January

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

What did we get up to this week? Found poetry and found song-writing!

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 Group: This week our Monday Zoom group were the first to kick off the found poetry/song-writing topic. Most of the children are familiar with found poetry and the many different ways you can do it, but we started with a brief explanation and reminder. Today they had a few options available.

  1. I copy and pasted random cut-up lyrics from real songs and put them in the chat. They could then use it to create either a poem, a song or a piece of flash fiction if they preferred. They could take whole sentences from the chat and rearrange them to create something new, or they could take single words, or just ideas.
  2. They could go around their house and look for words and phrases to construct a piece of writing from. Examples could be book titles, newspaper headlines, snippets of news and radio conversations, posters and signs etc.

I rather threw them in at the deep end with slightly too many lyrics in the chat, which I ended up reducing for the rest of the Zoom clubs! But we had some fantastic results, including a number of inventive limericks, and some wonderful poems/songs using lyrics from the chat to inspire .

Monday Christchurch Junior School: A slightly different approach for the school clubs. I took in a box of cut up words and phrases from magazines which they could use for found poetry or song-writing. Most of them are also familiar with this technique. But to inspire song-writing I wrote out random lyrics from a few songs about music (I Still Believe by Frank Turner, She Bangs The Drums by The Stone Roses and American Pie by Don McClean) These were written on larger strips of coloured paper they could then move around to suit themselves. Several children armed themselves with piles of strips and found a quiet corner or floor space to construct a song or poem with. We also had some lovely found poetry and it was notable how much better they were having done it before. For example, many were not just choosing random words now, they were choosing words that went together or created a theme. Check out some fantastic examples below!

Tuesday

Tuesday Zoom Group: The 11 plus Zoom group also responded to the lyric challenge and all of them chose to use the random lyrics in the chat to create something new. We had a wonderful poem, a very atmospheric song, and an eerie piece of flash fiction that cleverly connected to previous ones by the same author. Well done everyone!

Tuesday Bransgore C of E Primary School: Bransgore also had a play with strips of lyrics spread out on tables and the floor plus the usual found poetry snippets of words and phrases they are used to. We also had a lovely combination of songs, poems and small pieces of fiction. Here are a few examples.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus Zoom group: A huge well done to this group, who all tackled the lyric found poetry/song-writing challenge with great curiosity and enthusiasm. We had a wonderful mixture of songs, poems and pieces of flash fiction from taking random lyrics and using them to spark off ideas! Well done everyone.

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom group: Some of this group are new to found poetry but took to it with an open mind and gave it a go! Fantastic attitude. They had the same lyrics as the older and mixed age groups and did a truly spectacular job. We had several small and very thought-provoking poems, a song that the author hopes to write piano music to go with, a piece of flash fiction that showed true mastery of language, pacing and atmosphere and a really fun little poem created from the objects and words around them. Everyone did so well!

Wednesday Christchurch Junior School: These guys had the same strips of lyrics and random words from magazines and the option of writing songs, poems of pieces of flash fiction. We had a lovely selection of all and I was very impressed by everyone! Here are a few examples.

A huge well done to everyone! See you all next week!