Tag: writing activities

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 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.