Give me a title
For some children a title or a phrase is all it takes. For others, no matter what, the response is, “I don’t know what to write.”
That response – “I don’t know what to write,” – said in reply to an activity in a creative writing session, is frustrating. Especially as in the class there may well be children who, in response to something as odd as “What is a Butterphant?” immediately find images and ideas flashing into their minds.
And it is this latter group of children, those who find the ideas always spring forth as they learn to develop and utilise their creativity, who are the ones who in modern world, are at a distinct advantage from the off.
For these are the young people who are already developing an understanding of what it means to live in a society in which everything is changing all the time. Indeed, although they don’t realise it yet, they are the generation that is going to have to adapt to new ideas, far more often and far more quickly, than any generation before.
As a result, where we can persuade primary school children to explore the English language with their own creative writing, we are giving the children the creative thinking and writing skills that become the context for moving out of “what is,” into exploring “what might be.”
Of course, there still have to be restraints and rules. A writing activity that is completely free and given without any guidelines would be unhelpful to most children. They live in a world in which rules are everywhere, and have little idea of what to do without rules.
But there is a solution: a structured approach to their creative writing, which in no way curtails their imagination or their understanding, and which gives them the freedom to create something completely new.
And this is what Cracking Creative Writing (which is available in two volumes, one for each primary school Key Stage) offers.
The first volume, for KS1, builds creative writing activities out of key rules within the language, from using adjectives, to capital letters, from questions to exclamations, while including over 75 activities ranging from the use of “and” through to writing a musical!
The KS2 volume takes the children through the four fundamentals of creative writing: imagination, the natural order of the world around us, non-fiction and finally, playing with the language.
Indeed, in this second volume there are around 100 separate activities ranging from ways in which our imagination can always help our writing, through to shapes and patterns and what we can do with them.
You can read more about Cracking Creative Writing in KS1 here and Cracking Creative Writing in KS2 via this link and in each case download extracts from the books to try, as well as place an order on line.
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