We often speak with parents who express concern about their child's lack of engagement with creative writing. Whether the work is rushed or simply refused seem to be common topics of conversation.
For many children, we believe the main challenge is the time taken or envisioned to create the writing. We live in a world of everything at the click of a button (YouTube/NetFlix/Google etc). The notion of dedicating 20-30 minutes of quite writing time will not only feel alien to many children but could also fill them with apprehension.
We have designed our creative writing course around this modern short-term focus. Each week we provide a short 30-45 minute lesson that recaps on previous creative writing skills and looks to add another one into the melting pot. Topics covered recently include 'wow openings', 'show don't tell' and 'sense enhancement'. Following the lesson we invite all students to submit a short piece of work that evidences both the current skills and a selection of previously practiced ones.
After a few weeks, we are accustomed to getting feedback from parents and students about how much they are enjoying the writing and how engaged theya are with it. This increased focus then transmits itself to school and we hear of 'best parents' evening' ever and regular class awards.
Many parents reading this will be looking to develop the writing skills of their child with a view to success in grammar school entrance exams such as St. Anselm's College. It is standard for these entrance exams to ask students to write for up to 30 minutes after selecting a topic (usually a choice of two). With this in mind, we constantly change the genre we ask students to write about with most recent ones includes horror, detetive and science fiction.
If you would like to find out more about our creative writings classes, a free sample can be found here:
Having loved creative writing at school, the aim of the sessions is to both build skills and confidence with writing but also to develop the enjoyment that will see children choose to write, write and write some more.
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