Your Unique Alien

You'll need white paper, coloured card and felt tips. You might also like to add some googly eyes into the mix as these always go down well. 

Ask the children to fold a piece of white paper in half and write their names in very large letters along the fold. Keeping the paper folded, they should cut out the shape those letters broadly make and then unfold it to reveal their alien's odd outline. Next they stick the shape onto a coloured card background, add in the detail with felt pens, and start to think about how their alien operates. These are useful questions to ponder:

 What does your alien eat?

What does it fear?

What planet did it come from? How did it arrive?

What are its special body features?

What does it think of YOU?

After the pupils have annotated their alien pictures with this biographical detail - plus any other information they want to add - they can write a story about how they first encountered their alien and what happened next.

(Many thanks to Amanda Smyth of West Midlands Writers who kindly said I could share her idea.)

Diamond Poems

Last week, all the children did was choose a wild animal they liked and try to draw it, studying still images and pre-approved YouTube videos clips. This week we began by watching this smashing little weasel film and talking about 'what made weasels weasly'. We identified verbs like bound, leap, spring, and compared the weasel's shape to other long thin things, and discussed the personality of the animal, how it was fierce and energetic and courageous.

Next I gave out blank templates (see below) and the group wrote a poem about a weasel together on the board using that format. 

That was our opportunity to quickly revise nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. 

I had made three templates available: the one below was aimed at confident Y4, 5 and 6 students, while there was a shorter one for younger children, and finally a simple diamond outline to fill in with whatever words the children liked if they didn't feel up to identifying with the grammar. 

Here's a poem about a 'devilish' shrew. Below, a squirrel is described as a 'fugitive' which I think is lovely.

One of the advantages of very short, structured writing is that it gives the children the confidence to edit their own work.

And if any errors are made by the children in classifying parts of speech - if an adverb's accidentally been placed in the adjective line - that doesn't matter because the finished poem will still hang together.

Fan Mail

So excited to get this message!

The Magic Ring

This lesson plan is taken from my new book, Boost Creative Writing at KS2.

Preparation: if you can provide some cheap rings for the children to handle, that’s great. But they could quickly fashion their own out of pipe cleaners or silver foil or ribbon, or you could use Haribo ‘Friendship Ring’ sweets.

Make the warm-up prompt something to do with magic.

      Discussion: what would you do if you were invisible? Ask the children to make a list of advantages and disadvantages to being invisible. What would an evil person do with such a power? What would a trickster do? Could you use the power to help others?

Read them this story:

You’re in a strange city, wandering around the shops, looking for a present for your mum. You go down an alleyway, off the busy main street, where it’s quiet and the buildings look older and shabbier. A shop sign catches your eye: Unique Jewellery. So you peer into the grimy windows and you can just make out a tray of very cool rings with a sign saying “The best gift you’ll EVER give”.

You push open the door and enter the shop. Inside it’s dim and cluttered, packed with amazing objects. In the corner towers a stuffed grizzly bear, balancing a spotted teapot on its paw. A live robin hops from perch to perch, eyeing you cheekily. There’s a spiked German helmet from World War 1 dangling from the ceiling above your head, and a row of fairy lights shaped like cats’ eyes are twined round the shop counter. The floor seems to be made up of pound coins set in plastic. Somewhere far off, a music box tinkles faintly. You try not to sneeze at all the dust.

Then the shopkeeper emerges from behind a red velvet curtain. He’s small with a face like a monkey and bright, clever eyes. He asks you want you want and you say you’d like to take a closer look at the rings.

Without another word he steps forward, reaches into the window, brings out the tray and places it before you. Your eyes boggle. They’re all amazing. Which to choose?

The more you stare, the more one ring draws your attention. In fact, it’s started to glow faintly. When you reach out to touch it, there’s a little prickle of electricity and a blue spark. You catch your breath. This is the ring for you. You hardly dare ask how much it is.

But the shopkeeper has read your thoughts.

“For you, today, that ring only costs one penny,” he says. “You and that ring are meant to be together.”

Your heart’s beating fast. 1p? He’s got to be mad. Best to pay the guy and get out of the shop! Quickly you fumble in your pocket and draw a penny out. It looks ridiculous. Nevertheless, he snatches it in a cool, dry hand, and with his other passes you the ring. Before he lets it go, though, he whispers to you: “Use it wisely, or else.”

And then, suddenly, you’re out on the street again, with no memory of opening the door or walking through it, and when you turn and check behind you, the shop has vanished.

Give out the rings, or whatever they’re making rings out of. They can fashion their own ring and wear it while they write.

Now tell the children: this ring, that you knew was magic somehow, turns out to make you invisible! And you’re going to tell the story of what happened next. Looking back at your list of advantages and disadvantages, explain how you used the ring and what happened as a result. Is this a happy story or a tale of disaster? 

If any of them need a starter line, tell them to begin by saying they tried to look at their watch and realised they couldn't see their own arm.

Sea Shells

Preparation: assemble some shells, ideally enough so the children have one each. They needn't be fancy shells, any ordinary UK sea shells will do. 
* Print out some Colour Wheels from here. Be lavish! It's worth the ink if you laminate them to use again and again, because honestly, this colour wheel is one of the most useful tools for creative writing I've come across.
* Make photocopies of the 'My Shell' sheet below.
* You could also provide magnifying glasses for a really thorough examination of the shells.

Delivery: warm the children up by asking them to make a list of things they might see on the ocean bed. 

      When that's done, give out the shells and let the children examine them for a minute or two. Then ask what they already know about shells. You could tell them:

Shells are made from something similar to chalk, but harder. They are the armour for molluscs (what is a mollusc? Oyster, snail, clam, mussel etc). They protect the animal inside and they give it its shape instead of bones inside the body. Different shapes serve different purposes: lots of frills, ridges and spines are there as protection. Smooth shapes enable the animal to escape quickly and burrow down into sand. Some of our most familiar fossils are of mollusc shells. (Ammonites.) One of the oldest shell collections was found in Pompeii. Very big shells for sale have often been taken while the animal was still alive, and then the animal’s been killed, so try to avoid buying large, fancy shells from shops. Picking up little shells from the beach is fine.

Ask the children - 

1.    How do the shells feel under your fingers? (Temperature, texture? Invite similes.)

2.   What patterns can you see? (Similes?)

3.   What colours can you see? Use the Colour Wheel to list them.

4.   What shape is your shell? (Similes?)

Then ask them to fill in the 'My Shell' sheet. Stress you are not looking for complete sentences because this is poetry.

These notes can then be written up as poems.

Y3

Y4

Y5

Y5

Y5

Y5

Spoon Wars

Preparation: get hold of some stick-on googly eyes. Assemble enough spoons/ forks/ safe kitchen implements for the children to have roughly two each. (You may need fewer if you want them to work in pairs.) 
Stick eyes on a fork of your own, ready to use as a character.

Delivery:
say to the children -

Do you ever stop to think what happens when your house is empty? When you go off to school, and your parents go to work or out to the shops, and the place is silent? Have you ever thought it might not be?

What if the things you use every day have a life of their own??

What if the chair you sit in thinks, “Ooof!” when you sit down? Or the wellie you carelessly splash through a puddle thinks, “Eugh, now I’m all wet!” Maybe the taps think, “Not so tight!” when you turn them off. Maybe the blunt crayon in the pot is silently screaming, “Sharpen me!”

And how do they all get on, these things that live in your house? Does the big joint of meat in the fridge bully the little yoghurt pot? When you close the drawer on your socks, do they all start to fight with each other? Do your school shoes complain that your trainers pong? Does the nice clean soap in the bathroom shout insults at the toilet roll?

I’ve brought someone along today who’d like you to think about the kind of life she has, and she’s brought some friends along with her.

Hold up your fork so the children can see it has eyes, and look at it expectantly. Bring it near to your ear as if listening to it.

Forky, is there anything you’d like to tell us?

Assume the voice of the fork.

I don’t suppose you've ever stopped to think what my life is like. Shoved head-first into boiling hot food, and then – eugh- stuffed into your gaping mouth and sucked clean. Then after the meal, thrown into the dishwasher or sink and bombarded with detergent. After THAT tossed into a drawer with the knives and spoons, and the spoons are SO snooty, and the knives are SO aggressive. Horrible. It'e even worse if you get into the wrong compartment. Once I spent whole night with knives. I was lucky to survive. Mind you, some of the other forks aren’t very nice…

Lower the fork, frowning, and resume speaking in your own voice.

That’s enough from Forky. She’s getting hysterical.

Now I’ll give give out some of Forky’s friends, and some stick-on eyes, and you’re going to write a short playscript of a conversation between two pieces of cutlery. You can work in pairs, threes or on your own. Be ready to read it out/perform it later on...

                                                                             ✩

Notes: although this is a light lesson built for fun, it revises playscript format which in turn could be a lead-in to paragraphing direct speech.

About Writing Club

 

Three years ago I set up an after-school writing club. It's been running non-stop ever since, is popular with boys and girls equally, and is regularly oversubscribed. I believe there is a real appetite among most children to write freely, experimentally and for pure pleasure, but given the demands on primary curriculum timetables, that kind of space is becoming harder and harder to find.

So on this blog you'll find ideas for one-off or starter exercises that can be fitted into an hour and are all about children having fun with language. You can use the ideas in a club setting, or as full-blown literacy lessons at KS2. Many of the techniques I suggest are ones employed by professional novelists, and all the exercises are based around a structured framework that supports students who may not be too confident with their creative writing. At the same time, there's plenty to engage those pupils whose creative brains fire up quickly. 

Feel free to take what you like and share it around. If you want more ideas, have a look at my brand new book, or at the sample pages on my personal website.