Tag: writing clubs

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 16th June

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What did we get up to this week?? More work on our collaborative project and out anthology is ready to preorder!!

Exciting times at Chasing Driftwood Writing Group, as an anthology over a year in the making is finally available to preorder! The World You Gave Us is an anthology of poetry, flash fiction, short stories and creative non-fiction written entirely by young people who attend our clubs. On the 30th June it will be published in both ebook and paperback by our own imprint Chasing Driftwood Books and will be available across multiple platforms. I’ll share the relevant links next week when the Amazon paperback version has been approved.

our anthology!

A huge congratulation to all the young people who took part!

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: This week we looked at tension; what it is, why its important and how to build it into our stories, We discussed various tips on creating tension, such as using short, sharp sentences, paying attention to sensory information and using the character’s body language, and we had tension themed prompts to respond to. Great work from all and further progress on all the town stories!

Monday CJS Club: Mostly progress on town stories today with a few actually finished! Amazing! Well done everyone. We also had a chat about tension and discussed the techniques we can use to add tension to our stories.

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom club: This group also had the tension tips followed by the tension prompts and we also had great progress on all the town stories. Well done to all!

Bransgore Primary School: Today we discussed how to add tension to stories and made more progress with our town stories with a few finished! Great work!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Group: The same discussion on adding tension to scenes, tension themed prompts to choose from, followed by progress on our town stories. Great work from all. Their on-going collaborative story is also nearly finished!!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Group: These guys did really well responding to the tension techniques and the prompts combined! Lots of progress!

Wednesday CJS Club: This group also discussed how to add tension to stories and continued to make progress with their town project. We also have a few finished stories in this group now!!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 9th June

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Lots of progress on our town project!

This week I’m just going to do one post for all the clubs as they’ve all covered the exact same prompts plus made progress on their town stories! Apologies to Bransgore Primary School writing club however as I had to cancel due to a family emergency.

The prompt choices this week were:

  • There’s something different about this place. Something hard to describe or fathom…
  • Did the world turn upside down one day? Got all shaken up and out came this place?
  • What strange places our lives can carry us to…. What dark passages…
  • How can such a dark and dangerous place be so beautiful?
  • A day in Lakeside View begins like any other… The sun rises…

As usual we had a lovely mix of responses. Some children used the prompts for poetry or flash fiction, and some used them to further their town project stories.

Everyone made progress on their stories too. We have reached the ‘weary’ stage with a few of them but this had been a great talking point within the clubs. Everyone experiences ‘writers block’ at some point, and getting ‘stuck’ in a story is a big part of that. There is also the temptation to start a new story whenever a story gets stuck. We’ve managed to get a few stuck stories past their humps though this week and we are determined to keep them all going!

Thanks everyone, see you next week!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 2nd June

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What have we been up to this week?

Monday

Monday Zoom Club: It was a warm welcome back after the half-term break and straight back into our collaborative writing project! We started with a writing prompt that they could use to write a scene for their town story or just respond to with an unconnected piece. The prompt for this week for all the clubs was:

“I don’t know what is worse… The sound, the smell, or what I have imagined in my head.”

We had some wonderful responses, some connected to town stories and some not. Well done everyone!

(Note: There was no CJS Monday club this week due to a staff day.)

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: This group also responded wonderfully to the prompt and we had a mix of pieces unrelated to their project stories and some that were connected. We also had a wonderful poem!

Tuesday Bransgore Primary School Club: These guys started with ten minutes of silent writing to respond to the prompt and then got on with their project stories. It was lovely to see lots of progress on some of these stories too!

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: Wonderful work as always from this group who got stuck straight into the prompt and produced some incredibly tense pieces! Some were connected to their projects stories and some not.

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: Despite being the youngest group, these guys also tackled the same writing prompt with amazing results and made progress on their project stories!

Wednesday CJS Club: Ten minutes of silent writing time responding to the prompt went down very well with this committed group of young writers! Major progress made on project stories!

Children’s Writing Clubs W/C 24th February

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What did we get up to this week? Different storytelling formats for Zoom clubs and junk journals for the school kids!

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: It was lovely to be back together after a week off for half-term and we got stuck straight into a new topic. Different ways to tell stories! We all know about choosing a tense and a point of view, but what about other formats we can use to tell a story? Such as letters, diaries, blog posts, emails or news reports? We started with a chat about books we’ve read that fall under this category (epistolary stories…) and several members of the group enthusiastically talked about books they loved. I mentioned House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and a few people suggested Holly Jackson’s Good Girl’s Guide To Murder series. Both great examples! We started today with two options. One: pick a photo prompt and write the news story to go with it
Two: write a news story to narrate a part of your own on-going story

We had some fantastic responses to this and everyone was happy to share, which was lovely. Well done everyone!

Monday CJS Club: For the next couple of weeks we are going to be making junk journals in school! We started by discussing the difference between a diary and a journal and talked about some journaling examples such as a nature journal, memory journal or travel journey. I explained that a junk journal is made from junk and recycled bits and bobs and can be anything they want it to be. We started today by first creating a ‘blind bag’ or ‘surprise bag’. This was partly to get them into a creative mood and get them thinking about possible themes for their journals. The surprise bags were a big hit and it was brilliant to see how differently they tackled them! You create a little envelope style ‘bag’ with a piece of paper and then decorate it however you like. As you can see from the examples below, they were very varied in design and purpose! Some children, for example, wanted to focus on nature, so as well as decorating the bag they also wrote tiny little poems and drew pictures to put inside. One child created a bag of games to play when bored! Another was designed as a ‘top secret’ bag full of secrets! Next week they will design their journal’s front and back cover and then can start adding fun pages over the next few weeks!

Tuesday

Tuesday 11 Plus Zoom club: A great session today with this group. A few of them chose to write a news report based on the picture prompts offered while another member of the group wanted to start a new story and decided to start the story with a newspaper report about a missing person. We have tackled article writing in the past and it was lovely to see them all remember things like an attention grabbing headline followed by a sub-title or lead, followed by the story itself. Fantastic!

Bransgore C of E School club: These guys were thrilled by the idea of making junk journals and jumped straight into making surprise bags first. We had a really varied selection of bags, including jokes, ideas, writing prompts and even dares! They also helped me put some finishing touches to my own junk journal which I plan to put writing prompts and ideas in, plus the little notes and drawings I often get given! Here are some examples of their surprise bags today.

Wednesday

Wednesday 11 Plus Zoom Club: The older Wednesday group got stuck into news report style stories today, using a selection of picture prompts to inspire ideas. We also discussed epistolary stories and what they involve, giving examples such as Holly Jackson’s Good Girl’s Guide To Murder series, House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski and more. We had some wonderful examples from everyone with some very enticing news stories relayed!

Wednesday 8-11 Zoom Club: For some of this group it was their first time discussing epistolary stories and learning how to craft a news report. We shared some top tips, such as creating an eye-catching headline and using clear and concise language. They all did so well! Most chose to use the picture prompts to help them craft a story and one child decided to use her own toys to create exciting news stories from! Well done everyone!

Wednesday CJS Club: These guys were excited to create and decorate their surprise or ‘blind’ bags in preparation for creating junk journals over the next few weeks. Lots of them already knew what a junk journal was and they all fantastic ideas for their bags today, such as dare bags, worry bags, bag to keep stickers in and kindness bags! Here are some examples.

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!