Tag: poems

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 15th December

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Wintry and Christmas themed prompts on Zoom and making poetic bookmarks in school!

It’s been a shorter and quieter week for me without Burton or Bransgore school clubs running, but this is what we got up to on Zoom and at CJS!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: A host of Christmas and wintry themed prompts for all the Zoom kids to choose from this week and the ‘write a Christmas horror story’ was by far the most popular prompt! Lovely work from this group as always and more progress on their long on-going stories.

CJS Monday Club: A small group as lots were busy carol singing, but the rest of us got busy making Christmas gifts in the form of bookmarks with poems written on! Haiku was the suggested poem due to its small size but they could do anything they liked and we had some wonderful creations!

Tuesday

11 Plus Zoom Group: The horror prompt was again very popular in this group although we did have one member choose the winter solstice themed prompt. They were all lovely pieces!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: A lovely selection of prompts chosen to respond to today and again, the horror themed option was popular!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: More responding to Christmas themed prompts and again, more progress on on-going projects!

Wednesday CJS Club: This group got to make their poetic bookmarks today and what a beautiful selection of poems were created! Absolutely lovely!

Have a lovely Christmas break everyone and see you on 2026!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 8th December

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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 1st December

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Poetry in schools and responding to wintry images on Zoom!

Monday

Monday Zoom Group: Today we had a selection of wintry themed landscape images to respond to in the chat. They could respond in any way they liked, with poetry, flash fiction, a non-fiction descriptive piece or a story! The images went down quiet well with some wonderful story ideas forming!

Monday CJS Club: This group had a poetry prompt today, which involved writing a 5 line poem about memories of a favourite toy. They could have a Christmas vibe if they liked! They also got on with more work in their newspapers!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: This group had the same wintry landscape images to respond to

Bransgore C of E Primary: As we are in the library for this club we had a slightly different poetry prompt. They had to use the last line of any book and use it to write a poem!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: Fantastic responses to the wintry landscape prompts this week, with some new pieces written as well as some using the images to tie in with their on-going projects!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: this group also gave a fantastic response to the images. Everyone wrote a brand new piece and many of them decided these could grow into bigger stories they want to continue with next week!

Wednesday CJS Club: We did some poetry on this club today, using the same 5 line poetry prompt about a favourite toy or memory of a toy. This went really well and lots of them lined up at the end to share their poems!

Thursday

Burton C of E Primary School: This week we had a small break from the on-going mini newspapers and wandered into the school library. Everyone had to find a last line from any book and then use that to write a poem, story or comic strip from! This went really well. Here are some pictures from last week of their newspapers so far!

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 31st March

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What have we been up to this week? Editing tips and on-going stories for Zoom, Easter/Spring poems and cards for school clubs!

Monday

Monday CJS Club: Our final session for this term and we were writing Easter or Spring themed poems and sticking them into Easter cards for our loved ones! The children also had the choice to just carry on with a story they are working on, so we had a mix of responses. Great work, have a lovely Easter break everyone!

Monday Zoom Club: This group had a choice between making progress on stories, responding to prompts, or joining in a discussion on editing. The editing topic discussed different types of editing and editors, plus offered tips for self-editing. Well done everyone and see you after Easter!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: This group also covered the editing topic and also made great progress with their on-going stories and projects!

Bransgore C of E Primary School: Lots of Easter and Spring themed poems today at Bransgore! Well done everyone! Enjoy the break!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: These guys went for a mix today. Some continued to make progress on on-going stories, some added writing to our group story, and some responded to the offered prompts! Fantastic attitude and effort from this group as always! Have a lovely Easter break!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: Most of this group carried on their Minecraft stories today, but some responded to the prompts on offer and one started writing a play! Brilliant work from everyone!

Wednesday CJS Club: More Easter/Spring themed poems stories and cards today!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 3rd March

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What did we get up to this week? More epistolary techniques for Zoom clubs and junk journal progress at 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 mixed-age Zoom club – We continued our epistolary techniques topic this week. This time they were asked to write something using one of more epistolary techniques, except news reports, as we did those last week. They could write something to tie in with on-going stories, or they could respond to one of the following prompts:

Write a piece that uses one or more epistolary techniques.

PROMPTS:

  • Some parents are disagreeing about something their children have been accused of
  • A lost pet poster leads to some unsavoury accusations
  • A missing persons case is either helped or hindered by online speculation
  • Two people arrange to meet up after years apart and for dramatic reasons
  • A school project leads a student to discover something strange about their town
  • A famous band relives their best and worst moments
  • A family chat descends into chaos

Well done to everyone in the group – we had some fantastic responses!

Monday CJS club: This session the children started making their junk journals. I brought in lots of recycled materials to aid their creativity, such as cardboard, coloured paper, old birthday cards, magazines and comics, stickers and more. They loved the washi tape which is basically tape that’s very decorative! The binder rings were a big hit too. Here are the Monday junk journals so far!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 plus Zoom club: This group had the same epistolary technique prompts as the Monday club, and we had some wonderful responses including a chaotic family group chat and a band reliving some memorable moments during an interview!

Bransgore C of E Primary school club: More junk journal fun today! The journals have been created and decorated with various fun and recycled pages added! Here are some examples of their work.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus Zoom club: This group also tackled the epistolary stories this time using letters, diaries, blog posts, emails and so on. We had some wonderful responses to the offered prompts including a wonderful mixed technique story which involved text communication between a mother and a son that built up a real sense of unease, then moved into a more traditional format to move the story forward! Excellent! We also had a very funny example of how parental group chats can descend into chaos! Well done everyone and thank you!

Wednesday 8-11 yr old Zoom club: The younger group also tackled the same topic and the same prompts and I keep reminding them that very often I am giving them the same work as the older groups and they are smashing it every time! They ought to be very proud of their attitude to learning new things. We had some wonderful pieces from this group too, including an argument via text messages and a news report that also involved some family members missing from a group chat. Brilliant stuff! Well done everyone.

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were very excited to get started on their junk journals and like the other groups, particularly enjoyed the ring binders and the washi tape! I have been bowled over all week by the immense creativity the children have shown in creating their junk journals. No two are the same and each beautifully expresses the individuality and passions/hobbies etc of each child. We will be carrying on with our junk journals next week! Here are some examples from today.

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 10th Feb

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What did we get up to this week? Pacing and imagery for Zoom, poetry for schools!

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: Today they had a choice of discussing pacing or imagery. They could choose between the topics or work on both if they had time. We discussed what pacing is and had examples of how to increase pacing to fast or slow within a story or within a scene. We then had four activities to choose from to practice writing fast or slow paced scenes. Or if they chose imagery, we also briefly reminded ourselves what imagery is and gave some examples and they had four options to choose from for responding. Well done to everyone – we had some wonderful sharing of fast and slow paced writing, which was lovely to analyse and also helpful to anyone unsure. We also had some great responses to the imagery topic, with more writing being shared from that!

Monday CJS Club: We looked at poetry today and they could choose between list poetry, Haikus and acrostic poems. I talked them through each type of poem first and it was great that we had a real mix of different responses. I took in The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris to show them such beautiful examples of more complex acrostic poetry. Here are some examples:

Tuesday

Tuesday Zoom Club: They chose to tackle pacing rather than imagery and came up with some great examples of slow and fast paced writing.

Tuesday Bransgore C of E Primary: Back to poetry for the after school group! A choice of acrostic, haiku and list poems and again we had a lovely mix of all. I absolutely loved the three nature based poems one child wrote after being inspired by The Lost Word! We had also had some very good rhyming poems!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 plus Zoom club: We discussed both pacing and imagery today – in particular ‘showing’ vs ‘telling’ in writing. Everyone had a go at either writing a random scene that was slow, fast or mixed, or carrying on with a on-going project and sharing an extract to discuss whether the scene is fast, slow or mixed. Fantastic work!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom club: We looked at imagery, and in particular ‘showing’ vs ‘telling’. This was a new concept for some of them and they handled it brilliantly with plenty of curiosity and enthusiasm! They managed to liven up my boring ‘telling’ sentences by rewriting them into ‘showing’ sentences that were far more engaging! Well done guys!

Wednesday CJS club: back to poetry again! We had a lovely mix of rhyming poems, acrostic poems, haiku and list poems from this group today! Absolutely brilliant. Here are some examples:

Great work everyone!

Have a lovely half-term and I will see you all the week after!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 27th January

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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!