Competition, Showcase Preparations and Spinning The Wheel

It's one week until the SHOWCASE and the Junior Writers all have their favorite creations prepared! Some have stories, diary entries, pictures and poems all ready to proudly share to their grown ups and friends.

Today it was also time to hand in our competition entries of which we have 2 incredible stories from Iris and Bea that I can't wait to submit. These submissions will also be performed at the showcase next week.

To accompany their amazing writing this week we made Author Acknowledgements for each writer. The acknowledgements were made up of a picture and then some made up text about their 'author selves' this could be real facts or imaginary nonsense and most of them ended up being the perfect mix of both.

Aside from the showcase, the writers have been working hard on entries to a competition from Youngwriters.co.uk . Today was final hand in day so I can send off the entries over the summer holidays. Me and Rohan are so impressed with the standard of work created for the competition and hope that the writers will read their entries at next week’s showcase.

8^th July

Next week is our final session of the year – our summer showcase! Ahead of that, we spent some of today deciding what everyone would like to read to their friends, family, and fellow writers. BUT! In true Young Writers style, we knew we had more to do…

As a group, we thought about this term. What had been successful? What hadn’t? Which sessions had people enjoyed the most, and what would they like to do in the Autumn? Everyone also made three promises to themself for over the summer. Would they try and read more? See more plays? Finish that book?

We had a quick look at DADA – the avantgarde art movement we’ve previously explored. Some of the group have joined since those sessions last year, so we made our own DADA poem to remind ourselves of the spontaneous genius that comes when you pick lines at random out of a hat!

Both groups of young writers got to spin the wheel of fortune for the last time this year. Everyone had a character, a setting, and an opening line. Some examples included:

Characters:

Archaeologist
Tennis Player
Circus Performer
Dinosaur Hunter
WW1 Pilot

Settings:

Escape Room
Windowsill
Medieval Windmill
Frozen Planet
Lighthouse

Opening Lines:

I have this rule of asking strangers what kind of book they prefer.
Here is a small fact: You are about to die.
I think there’s something wrong with my phone.
It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.
Wrong number.

Over twenty minutes, everyone got to write a short story imagining their character in this situation. As a result, we met a murderous mermaid, a WW1 Pilot trapped in a biscuit factory, and a Pirate Captain in a Volcano (you need to dispose of your parking tickets somehow!)

In the older group, we had time for an additional exercise. Everyone received a unique image, which they then needed to describe to the rest of the group. However, they also each had to include five random words which had been chosen by the other young writers. One person had it easy – describe a horse like a zebra. But others had very complicated/nonsense words to try and describe a snow leopard on a mountain, or a young person listening to music in Chicago. Complicated.

As a couple of our writers won’t be able to join us next week, this was their final session as Young Writers. It’ll be sad to see them go, and we’ll obviously miss them, but it’s important to say that our Young Writers are always welcome back!

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Competition, Showcase Preparations and Spinning The Wheel