Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 1 & 2

I met with Tracye, the teacher I’d be working with, the Friday before the week we started our project. We talked about the outcome we wanted and hatched a plan of how to get there, with a rough time-line. We decided that thirty-two pages would be too daunting a task to complete, so we thought about sixteen to twenty might be about right. The students had already written some stories that they were going to use for their picture-books, so it was a matter of adapting them to fit a story-book format. We both agreed that a lot of them would need to change what they’d done quite significantly, as most of them had used a fair amount of description which slowed their stories down. I took some home to have a look at, and to think about some ideas they could use for changing them.

Tuesday: I met with the students for the first time. It was Grandparents’ day and we had some grandparents join us which was lovely. I told the class the story of how my Piggity stories had come into being, and it was nice to be able to share it with the extended family. I had Philip’s originals with me and showed everyone, and that’s always a magic touch. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t get moved by them, it’s still hard to believe that a human hand did them.

I showed the students some picture books that I thought worked well, and we looked at the structure of the story and how they worked. We looked at the structure of the first Piggity book and how little actually happens, but that there is a beginning, a middle and an end. I told them how I’d invented my characters and how I’d ended up with pigs.

Tracye had already talked to them about reducing their stories to bullet points so that they could see the storyline, and we talked about the possibility of changing their characters to animals, as most of them had done humans. We thought they might have more scope doing it that way, and it might be more fun. (and easier to illustrate).

Wednesday: Some students had done their bullet points, but some hadn’t, so Tracye and I went round and helped those who hadn’t. We started at each end – when I got through two students Tracye had finshed all the rest. Guess who’s had the teacher training! This was quite a slow day, as it was a big job to change the stories to something that might fit a picture book , and I was worried about taking over their work. They really needed to have a character that they were excited about, and changing some of them to animals did help. One story had a sister that mimicked the other, and the sisters became birds – it was a great idea (not mine) – it brought it alive. We talked about the style of writing once they re-wrote them, and I suggested that unless they were really familiar with writing rhyme then it was better to avoid it.

Thursday: I saw Tracye briefly and she told me that most students were going to do theirs in rhyme. I think maybe that rhyme is not the elite sport that I’d hoped it was.

Diana Neild