29 June 2024

Posted by Sukie

Junior & Young Writers – Week 10 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Final Showcase

Hi Writers!

This week was our final week of the summer term, and you know what that means –

showcase time!

We have the exciting news that our Autumn Term will be running from Saturday 9th

September to Saturday 9th December – don’t forget to contact the Forest Arts Centre

to book (and if you’re having trouble, just come along and we can sign you up!)

And what’s this? More exciting news? All of our writers will have the opportunity to

perform at the Play On Words Festival Showcase in November. More details to

come…

Our check-in this week was a summery one – describing our week as a beach item.

 Indie’s week had been an ice cream with lots of toppings – it had been a busy week

with Year 6 Apprentice taking place

 Hamish described his week as a bodyboard, going out at the start and coming in very

fast at the end of a long week

 Evan’s week had been like a calm sea

 Noah told us his week had been like a beach hut as he had been inside a lot and it

had been a bit boring

 Tabitha’s week had been a parasol that was sometimes a bit hard to open

 Catherine described her week as like an overturning wave as she had kicked a bin in

too-soft shoes and wiped out her toes!

 Daisy told us her week had been like a beach ball, fun and quick

 Claire’s week had been a Frisbee, flying this way and that as she zigzagged around

sorting everything out

 Sukie described their week as a beach ball with a lot of ups and downs, leading to

them being a bit deflated

We had lots of new material in our reading and writing check-in, which is always

encouraging!

 Noah had been writing a story about a haunted house, in which a boy explores every

strange floor of a bizarre and spooky home

 Evan was working on ‘The Quest’, a story about two teenagers hiking on a mountain

who discover a strange door and are plunged into a nightmarish lab trapped in a time

loop

 Catherine was reading ‘The Crooked Kingdom’

 Sukie was reading ‘The Red Necklace’, a fantasy set in revolutionary France

 Daisy was reading ‘The War of the Wind’

We played a few rounds of Buzzy Bees, I Went To The Store, and Riverbank to get

ourselves moving and start warming up our bodies and minds for our showcase before

warming up our minds and writing brains with some freewriting in which we described an

emotion using the five traditional senses.

After some more of the warm-ups we started experimenting with last week, in the Junior

Writers group we had our Reading Show & Tell Showcase where we heard about everyone’s

favourite books.

 Evan told us about ‘The Ladybird Book of Volcanoes’

 Indie described what she loved about ‘Charlotte’s Web’

 Hamish explained the plot of ‘Looshkin, The Maddest Cat In The World’

 Noah showed us ‘Rainbow Grey’

In our Young Writers group we exchanged the Reading Show & Tell for a Book Review!

Catherine and Diasy both shared reviews of ‘Electric Life’, which they had read for the

Hampshire Book Awards. Daisy found that it had made her feel grateful for her own life,

though the ending had been unrealistic, and Catherine liked it a lot but thought it was too

slow and the characters were not quite interesting enough. They both agreed that the ending

felt messy and unresolved, though it could work well if a sequel were to come out.

Our Young Writers engaged in some further freewriting on the topic of emotions, and Noah

took the stage to showcase his most recent piece of writing: ‘The Haunted House’, which

held visceral descriptions of blood and skulls scattered across the floors of the castle, and

wound up on a cliffhanger with a time machine appearing in the basement.

Today concluded our Summer Term of Junior & Young Writers. We hope every has had as

much fun as we have! It’s been massively inspiring to work with so many talented writers

with such boundless imagination. We’ll be back at Forest Arts on Saturday 9th September,

and we can’t wait to see you all there!

Sadly, Sukie will not be a regular co-facilitator this term, but they will try to pop by during the

term when they can, and hope to see some of you at the Play On Words Festival Showcase!

Have a wonderful summer, enjoy the sun and get lots of inspiration ready to launch into new

writing adventures in the Autumn Term!

Don’t forget: The Winchester Poetry Festival’s Young Poets Competition has opened! The

theme is ‘Our World, Our Planet’, and the task is to write a short poem (no more than 14

lines). This is being organised by Hampshire Cultural Trust, so it is open to anyone living or

studying in Hampshire (that means if your school is in Hampshire you can apply, even if you

live across the border). There are three age categories: 4-7, 8-11 and 11-16, and the

winners will receive a National Book Token as the prize. The closing date is Wednesday 31 st

July at midnight so we will definitely be setting some time aside during the summer term’s

Junior and Young Writers workshops to develop pieces for this competition.

Our Junior and Young Writers groups run every Saturday during termtime at the Forest

Arts Centre in New Milton. To sign up, just head to the Forest Arts website (it’s free!). Junior

Writers is for ages 7-10 and runs from 09:30-11:00, and Young Writers is for ages 11-14 and

runs from 11:30-13:00.

See you in September

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Junior & Young Writers – Week 10 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Final Showcase