Brian Moses and the Whales

I was thrilled to receive a super-quick response from the famous children's poet Brian Moses today. He said the poems were "without exception just superb." I can't wait to pass this back to the children next week. The poems are now published on his blog under the Jan 2nd entry, The Web of Life.

Wow! Whales!

We thought we'd write to the Japanese Embassy to ask them to stop hunting whales. Brian Moses had put out a call for whale poems at www.brianmoses.co.uk with this aim in mind, and so today the children of Criftins Writing Club took up the challenge.

First we watched two video clips of whales on YouTube, Orca Killer Whales Chasing and Huge whales swimming and jumping close to boat. The former has whale song so it's nice to have the sound up for that one. I gave them this sheet of whale facts so they could familiarise themselves with language such as pod, calf, migration and blowhole.

Then I asked them to write a word or phrase in response to each prompt on this list.

And here are some extracts from what they wrote.

A serious session, not so much 'fun', but it's nice to vary the tone of Writing Club from week to week.

Hamster Fun

I can't show you the cartoons we started last week as I haven't had all the permission slips in from parents to say I can share their children's work, so instead here's an idea for a straightforward narrative that went down well with another group I teach.

I gave them the opening below and then asked them:

- what kind of personality does the hamster have? Is it mischievous, domineering, sneaky, plain evil?

- how does Maggie react? Is she scared, delighted, stunned?

- what does the hamster have to say to her?

- is she going to share this news with anyone?

- what kind of adventures could you have if you owned a talking pet?

We discussed possible scenarios such as taking the hamster to school, using it to spy on people or to burgle houses, entering it for a talent show. 

Next week I shall give them little books and a sheet of hamster pictures taken from the internet to cut out for illustrations, and they can make their own complete stories.

                                                                     ***

The bedside clock said midnight but Maggie couldn’t sleep. She was too excited.

Over in the corner of the room sat a brand new hamster cage, and inside it, a brand new hamster. She’d gone with her mum earlier that day to choose him: a coffee-coloured ball of fluff with a pink nose and neat white paws. ‘I’m going to call him Podge,’ Maggie had said as the shopkeeper scooped him out of the tank and popped him into a little cardboard box. She was shaking with excitement as they drove home.

And all day she’d been waiting for him to come out and play.

‘Leave him be for a few hours,’ her mum had urged. ‘He’ll be frightened. He’ll need time to get used to his new home.’

So Maggie had sat impatiently, unable to concentrate on anything else because she kept glancing over at the cage and hoping Podge would show.

Now, at last, it sounded as if the hamster might be awake. She sat bolt upright and began to push back the duvet eagerly.

‘Hey!’ came a piping voice from the corner. ‘You! Come over here.’

Maggie stared. By the faint light coming through from the landing she could see that Podge had indeed come out. More than that: he was standing up on his hind legs and stretching a stern, skinny  paw through the cage, as if to beckon her.

‘Yes, you,’ repeated the hamster. ‘Big human. Come here. I’ve got something important to tell you.’

More Feedback on my Book 'Boost Creative Writing at KS2'

I couldn't resist sharing this nice comment on Facebook about one of the exercises in my book, Boost Creative Writing at KS2. The post (shared with permission) is from a leader at Writing West Midlands who tried my "Horror Scopes" exercise with her group of young writers and got some fun results. It's so lovely to get feedback like this.

Fruit Boy and Veggie Girl

One of the best things about Writing Club is being able to follow the children's own interests.

The character 'Fruit Boy' was born out of a simple word-association warm-up exercise. The child who came up with Fruit Boy instantly felt he'd created something with potential, and the rest of the group picked up on that energy and asked could they all write stories about Fruit Boy and his pal Veggie Girl.

Some people might dismiss comic strips as an easy, frivolous type of writing, but strip cartoons are quite demanding to create, as well as being a respected narrative format. I often mention to the students Art Speigelman's graphic novel 'Maus' which won the Pulitzer Prize for its powerful depiction of wartime Germany, (although many of the images inside are not suitable for KS2 so I am careful which pages I show). 

This week in Writing Club I've given the children a whole session just to plan their story in 7 frames. That's a task in itself - any professional author will tell you how hard it is to write a synopsis. Next week the difficulty will be to communicate each stage of the story in one or two speech bubbles per frame plus a caption. The writing will have to be extremely spare. Children who find writing daunting will therefore feel the task is accessible, while more confident pupils will find themselves stretched.

I used the free downloadable comic strip frames here: Picklebums. I then enlarged them to A3 size for ease of use and to give a bit more elbow room.

So watch out next week for the nail-biting adventures of Fruit Boy!

Happy New Year to Writers Everywhere

Writing Club will start again next week, and I can't wait!