I can't quite believe it's been five years with the Writers' Club at St. Mary's School. I remember we had a maths teacher in class V who had been teaching there for FOUR YEARS. And I thought that it was pretty much forever. I'm there now.My first batch was created for the sesquicentennial celebrations, and it led to the publication of Flickering Flames. In the second year, we put together a book of our own, handmade, and we called it The Book that Speaks. And in the following three years, I held a writing competition, with the results being announced during the very last session. Last year, I also invited a special guest to give away the prizes - and what fun that was.This year, my batch was particularly enthusiastic and we had not one but two parties - one for Christmas and one yesterday for our very last session. I love how excited all the girls are about the competition … [Read more...]
Dear Fictional Character
Yesterday, to round off our letter-writing activity, we wrote two more letters.One began with 'Dear Reader', and this is an activity I've done more times than I can count. I tweaked it slightly this time because of the idea of posting their letters to them. Instead of telling them that what they wrote would go into books in the library, I told them their letters would go in the mail to someone else in the room. They enjoyed it tremendously!(Here is an explanation of the activity, plus a link to a video you could use.)The second was a letter to a fictional character. I asked the children to choose any fictional character they love, and write a letter, sharing whatever they liked with that character. Among all the letters to Hermione Granger, Tom Gates, Silky (Faraway Tree) et al, here's one letter I found:I couldn't stop chuckling at this! Of course, I'm thrilled … [Read more...]
Letter-Writing at the Writers’ Club
I've been waiting to do this activity ever since I thought of it, and it was well worth the wait -- particularly because two children said this was the best Writers' Club session ever!Receiving a letter is lovely. I enjoy every part of it - the anticipation, seeing something in the postbox, seeing that it is addressed to me, opening it and reading it. That's why I decided to bring that to the Writers' Club. I asked each of the girls to bring an envelope to class; I brought the rest.For me, the first and biggest surprise was that children don't know how to address an envelope! My instructions were poor - simply because I didn't realise how clueless they would be. Many children wrote the address at the back of the envelope. Several others wrote their names in big bold letters and then somehow squeezed the address in below. Many didn't know that a stamp would normally be stuck at … [Read more...]
Characters at the Writers’ Club
Excitement is so contagious! The Writers' Club was full of energy today because of two activities we did based on the idea of how characters come alive to readers.A week ago, I asked the girls to think of a character they would like to present to the rest of the club. We had a few rules and then, because we had about a thousand questions, we had a few more rules.The bottom rule was this: try to make it fun for everybody. To work towards that, we had a few 'suggested' rules:Don't say too much; don't say too littleDon't choose obscure charactersDon't make your speech more than two minutes longDon't read out a speechAs we went on, more rules were added, but eventually, today, many of the girls had (of course) forgotten everything. Some had forgotten to think about a character at all, and two were too shy to come forward unprepared.Yet, we had Harry Potter, Geronimo … [Read more...]
Catching Up: Workshops
The more workshops I conduct, the more I realise how much I learn from them and enjoy them. The last workshop post was about a guest at the Writers’ Club, but a lot has happened since then.Writers’ ClubAt the Writers’ Club, I am constantly struck by the role experience plays in the way I organise my sessions. For at least the last three years, in an attempt to get children to explore different genres of writing, I also push them to explore all kinds of stories when it comes to reading. To do that, I choose a theme for each month, and the theme for the first month was adventure. When I corrected their notebooks, look at the lovely surprise that awaited me!The girl who reviewed it picked up a copy from the library. Unfortunately, the book is currently unavailable, which is why I haven't linked it here.Omkar CBSE SchoolA workshop on grammar can either be dull or great … [Read more...]
A Guest at the Writers’ Club
I love inviting people to talk to my Writers' Club - I think a new person brings a new kind of energy. With this being my fifth year with the Writers' Club at St. Mary's, I've started planning my sessions better, and involving previous batches each time we do something new and different.Yesterday, I invited Samiksha Deshpande, an ex-Writers' Club student, to talk to the girls. She was part of my very first Writers' Club batch and wrote two stories for our sesquicentennial collection, Flickering Flames. More recently, her poem was one of the nine winners of the Book Trotters Club #SummerWriting2019 competition, which received 93 entries.Samiksha chose to do a session on limericks. I love working with limericks, so I was delighted when she chose that as her topic!I sat at the back of the class for a large part of the session, interfering only later to work with the girls … [Read more...]
Working with Stories
Stories are magical; we all know that. What is even more magical is when you can feel creative energy pulsing all around you and then see those ideas transforming into stories.Creative Writing with ChildrenYesterday, at The Story Station, I met a group of enthusiastic young children, bursting with ideas. One boy had made a list of ideas that he wanted to develop into stories. And as a writing exercise, he came up with a portal to Legoland!A six-year-old told me she wants to write scary stories. Her first story was about Nina and the monster under her bed. The second was about falling through a wall into a place where it was Halloween! Terrified of a skeleton there, she ran back through the wall to safety.Yes, she is six (okay, six and a half, she would insist) years old, and yes, she wrote it right there in front of me during my workshop.Creative writing workshops … [Read more...]
Pen to Paper Creative Writing Workshop
The Pen to Paper competition was a nationwide search for young writers, organised by Edupeer and ICICI Lombard. It received about 10,000 entries! These were narrowed down to 2,000 and 1,000 and then, finally, the top 150 writers from all over the country were selected to receive training from an author.When FunOKPlease contacted me to ask whether I would be willing to facilitate the Pune chapter of the workshop, I hesitated. I don't usually work with non-fiction; I find fiction more engaging, more fun.Yet, I was intrigued. I do enjoy workshops with children who don't yet know one another. When people get to know one another through the course of an afternoon, it's exciting!And this workshop was no different. Eleven teenagers got together and shared stories. We spoke of pranks, humour, mystery and poetry.We asked ourselves crucial questions: What is the purpose of art? … [Read more...]
The Writers’ Club 2018-19
Another year at the Writers' Club has come to an end, and what a wonderful session we had to bring a creative year of stories to an end!We began, as always, with an announcement of the winners of this year's Writers' Club competition. Competitions are such fun! They create a mood of anticipation and celebration, which ensures that the energy stays high throughout the session.As before, two girls from a previous batch evaluated the entries, for I feel that learning to critique work is an important part of growing as a writer. Their responses and comments were heart-warming, as they paid attention to detail and identified why they liked what they liked.The highlight of the session, though, was our special guest, Dr Sreeja Nag, dear friend, ex-student of St. Mary's and research engineer at NASA. She was wonderful, warm and expressive, and we had a lovely hour with … [Read more...]
Making Creative Writing Engaging
Sometimes, I wonder whether secretly, I conduct creative writing workshops more to inspire myself than to inspire the children I work with. Whatever it is, I do know that I enjoy myself tremendously whenever I teach creative writing. I feed off the enthusiasm of the children and I come home ready to write, which is invigorating.Children and WritingMany children love to write. I was one of them, and I wrote all kinds of things, mainly inspired by what I read. I wrote about magic and school, and things that I thought would be moving - like earnest poetry about war and poverty. Writing is fun; it may even be good. But when publishing is so easy, I find that many parents and teachers think everything that children write is perfect. I don't always agree. Here are my pet peeves:Forced rhymeI … [Read more...]