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Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

07 November 2026

Posted by Hannah Dickinson

Autumn Term WEEK 6: RULES/ WORLD BUILDING

Choose a word from the bananagrams, yes they’re BACK! 


We wrote a warm up 6 minutes of writing a story from our word that we chose from that bananagram letter 


Next Level activity: “A World just like our own… but!”

  • Toes don’t exist 
  • Velcro is everywhere 
  • We never have nights
  • Snot is flammable 
  • Soup is rain


Then we wrote a diary entry of an ordinary day in our ‘world’ 


Buzzy bees break !


We came back to our worlds and introduced ordinary activities on top of them.

Example: 

Rice is the only food that’s consumed. 

Context: two friends meet for a picnic in the park. Rice is provided for the main course, side and pudding! 


Then what happens when we add chaos/ a conflict? 


The friend brings a forbidden food, a chocolate cake to the picnic that she sneaked in. 


We asked more questions to prompt our world such as:

Where did the rice come from? 

How do people do their food shop? 

What happens if another food was eaten? 


Group 2- full house today team! 


Starting strong with bananagrams warm up:


‘Bar of soap sat mournfully’

‘Elephants give me the ick’ 


We wrote our next level activity in the style of: A world just like our own… but! 

Examples included- 


Rabbits are mutated 

Trees are two inches tall

Apples make you hallucinate. 


We then used our favourites from our top three to write a diary entry of an ordinary day in the life where this ‘rule’ is normal and has been active for a while. We have:


Gerald the prophet reading cat (Can be read on that title page of this blog) 


Buzzy bees break.. interesting mix of sheep bees and sad bees? Perhaps a mutation of next generational writer bees? 


We then put our world to the test against the others! 

We asked three questions to our partner about their worlds, which led to potential problems the characters may face, a conflict evolving. 


What if the instruments out of the ears stopped playing music? 

Or the characters played by Benedict Cumberbatch started talking off script?

Or we started to stop taking dream medication ? 


We took these everyday problems to the papers! A newspaper headline! 

Next week and over the last few weeks of term, we’ll be building a collaborative world.


Suggestions are-

Potatoes are used as drugs to see the real world 

Speak to the stars 

Darkness is deadly 

Earth is a living creature

Putin is a baby

Immortal panda 

Everything is on a lava mountain 

Children rule the world 

Mirror world 


See you next week! 

H x

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