Workshops

I’ve used these workshops, adapted to level for KS1 and KS2 – and sometimes KS3 – to support creative writing. Although flexible in length, I generally give sessions of an hour at a time.

Firstly, I share some of my ideas on a particular theme for approximately 10-15 minutes. These tend to be short and snappy, particularly aimed at reluctant writers who aren’t put off by the length of the potential pieces they will be writing – and then they tend to do far more writing than they ever have before!

I usually, but not exclusively, use pieces from my book, CRAZY IDEAS To stimulate creative writing published by Claire Publications – though often I will specifically write pieces to match a theme that the children are exploring at the request of the school I’m visiting.

I then get the children to write their own pieces, while I move from group to group/child to child and discuss their ideas with them. This takes about 20-30 minutes.

I would then close the session by asking a selection of the children to share their work, once again aiming to get the children who don’t often have work to present, to enjoy the satisfaction of sharing their work with the rest of the class. If there’s time left at the end of the workshop, then I would offer a Q&A session. Sometimes I will do a second session with the same group using different/more developed themes.