Cabbage Capers

It's half term week here, but this is what I'm planning to do when I get back.

I'll get a few red cabbages and give the children time to really investigate them. They could peel back some of the leaves, and then if I cut one or two cabbages open, the students can look at the patterns inside. I might even provide some black paint for them to do cabbage prints (or white paint on black paper) - I'll have to see how we do for time.

I'll give out some colour wheels to help them describe the different shades of red and white on the cabbage and then I'll use the lesson notes above to prime the pupils' creative language.

Finally I'll give out the prompt sheet and ask them to fill in the gaps. They can use those responses as the basis of a poem.

I'll let you know how it goes!
Added: the juice of a red cabbage can stain, so make sure white shirts are protected.

Solve the Crime

Normally I design my own creative writing activities, but I thought I'd try a commercial game for once. I invested £6.99 to download Treasure at Tadpole Tower and tried it out with some success. 

The 'crime' took about half an hour for a group of ten clever Y5s and 6s to solve, but I think I could have extended things by only giving out one clue each initially (I gave the children two each to start off with, and kept the rest with me instead of hiding them round the room as the site suggests. What happened, though, was that the pupils came together to swap clues and pool information. Also I did release a third clue each after about twenty minutes). 

Instead of paper tokens I used plastic jewels because I thought it was more in keeping with the theme. I had sticky labels with the character names written on them for the children to wear. 

What's nice about the game is you can play it up to nine times more with a different culprit each time. Because the children enjoyed it so much, I consider it a good investment and have ordered a second one - potentially twenty activities! And of course this mystery scenario could easily be a springboard for further creative writing.

When Emergency Strikes

Many children are off school with a bug at the moment, and the session I'd planned couldn't go ahead. Worse than that, I was feeling ropey myself. But I always carry a pad of coloured paper in my Writing Club bag and a few sheets of sticky jewels.

I asked the children to write the title 'Fun Facts About Me' in the centre of their coloured sheet, then add bits of surprising information such as Future Ambition, Role Model, Motto, Favourite Place, Hidden Talent, and anything else they fancied revealing. I did stress they weren't to disclose anything they weren't comfortable about sharing! They could also include one fib, if they wanted. As they worked using coloured felt tips, I dished out the jewels so they could decorate their efforts. 

Afterwards, they enjoyed sharing their Fun Facts, and we had a good time trying to guess who was fibbing about what.

Sadly I can't show you what they did as our rural internet was down and I couldn't post anything to the website! Definitely one of those days. 

But you can get a long way on a piece of bright card.

Recipe for Disaster

After looking at some inspirational memes such as...

...the children wrote their own, less positive ones. We brainstormed ideas such as Recipe for a Terrible Teacher, for a Bully, for a Hideous Holiday, a Dreadful Christmas, a Bad Sibling, a Dire PM and the World's Worst Wedding. Then we chose one and composed a group effort.

Finally the students wrote their own recipes, copying them onto decorated paper plates. You'll need more paper plates than students because some pupils will need a couple of attempts. Felt tips are best for decoration - Sharpies if you can stretch to them. (B&M Stores currently do a nice big set for a very reasonable price.)

More Nice feedback, and Puppetry

Lovely to be alerted to this feedback by another creative writing tutor working with young people. My creative writing book is available to buy for £10 and contains the same kind of writing prompts as you'll see on this blog. So if you like what's here, you may want to take a look.

In the meantime, I had a very entertaining session with a different group where they used hand puppets to produce and then act out scripts.

Riddles - Who Are We Talking About?

Lots of us have played this as a party game, but it's an ideal forty-five minute filler and generates lots of discussion and laughter.

You show the children how to describe someone using metaphors, all filling in a sheet together and using someone they all know, like a member of staff. Stress politeness and kindness - if they're writing about fellow pupils or about adults in the school, their answers should be positive enough to read out to read out in front of that person. Nothing rude!

Then they can choose who they want: a member of the school community, a person on TV or even a fictional character, as in the example of Matilda above. When the sheets are completed, the students take turns to read out their clues, stating whether their person is male or female and where you'd see them. Then the other children can guess.

Incidentally, a good ten-minute filler if an activity doesn't quite fill an hour is an easy word search. I run these competitively with a small chocolate bar as a prize, and they always go down well.