never knowingly without a pen
I enjoy browsing through poetry books on the look out for poems that I think will work well in a workshop. As I mentioned before, the theme for National Poetry Day this year is 'Freedom' so I've been looking for suitable poems to take into St Gregory's Catholic College where I'm working as Writer in… Continue reading Poetry Workshop Ideas: The Long Holidays by Esther Morgan #writerinschool
I'm using this blog as a notebook to record my time working with students at St Gregory's Catholic College, Bath, as Writer in Residence. I'll use the tag 'writer in school' so you should be able to find my posts here by using that search term. It's still early days in my residency, I'm now… Continue reading Beginning to write poetry with secondary school students #writerinschool
As I'm Writer in Residence at St Gregory's Catholic College this year, I'm keeping this page updated with a list of competitions and organisations which might be of interest to writers of school age - 5 to 18. Please add further suggestions in the comments section. Writing competitions now open: The Betjeman Poetry Prize… Continue reading Opportunities for Young Writers
Encouraging playfulness in children's writing (and maybe in adult's writing, too) The inaugural 'Discover Challenge' at WordPress Blogging the Senses has reminded of the time I worked with groups of Year 1s (5 and 6 year olds) and Year 5s (9 and 10 year olds) and I asked the children to use all of their senses to… Continue reading Writing the senses
This was a writing workshop with 90 children, split into three mixed-age groups, half Year 6 (10 and 11 year olds) and half Year 1 (5 and 6 year olds). The theme of the workshop was 'listening' and the children started by writing continuously for about three minutes, listing all the sounds they could hear… Continue reading Writer in School: I sat in the quiet classroom and I heard……
June 2011 This writing exercise worked well with mixed aged children (5 and 6 year olds with 9 and 10 year olds). Older children supported the younger ones ('Shall I start that off for you?' 'Shall I write that for you?'), younger children often had a wider variety of ideas! We started by talking about… Continue reading Writer in school: My School Jumper – a writing exercise using all five senses
Josephine Corcoran 