We began this week by talking about the pets the children owned (or would like to own). Those children who did have pets talked about how naughty they could be, and those who didn't have a pet chatted about animals they'd seen misbehaving on funny clip shows like You've Been Framed. Everyone really enjoyed sharing their anecdotes so I didn't rush this part of the session.
Then I read them the Diary of a Useless Hamster and gave out the diary templates. The children then had 15 minutes to try and fill in an entry for every day. To spice things up I ran the task as a competition, with the funniest story winning a small prize.
In my experience, students who find creative writing daunting are more comfortable when the task is very structured and broken up -- and I've never met a child yet who doesn't like animals -- so this exercise should suit pretty much everyone.
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