Creative Coaching at Central Normal School Day 12

Well, there are definite signs of finishing the project. Yay. One was totally complete, but there were still punctuation mistakes that we had to correct with twink. There still needed to be more proof-reading in the draft stage by some of them, but they are only year 5/6, and haven’t seen the amount of written work that Tracye and I have in our hundreds of years of reading, so won’t have developed that eye for mistakes. It’s worth developing. One child was definitely behind the others, and it’s become frustrating for both of us with this particularly lagger, as we don’t see much progress from one week to the next and we keep having to go over the same things. Still, it’s a good story and a credible character, so worth persevering.

We’ve got a real variety of characters and styles and techniques with these picture books. We’re very pleased with what they’ve managed to produce out of a blank page – we’re pleased with the standard of creativity and the thought that’s gone into their picture-books.. They are trying to pull together quite a few different skills into one finished project, and without doing dozens of drafts first, it’s a difficult thing to achieve. They’ve done well. There are a million things to think of with a project like this – even remembering to put your name on the cover as writer and illustrator! Most of them have done really well with the time-frame, and showing enthusiasm every week. Remembering their ages, it can be quite daunting to have to re-do two pages of illustrations because something doesn’t fit with the story, or the size isn’t right, or the character is doing the wrong thing. They’ve been great kids to work with, and I think they are pretty proud of what they’ve achieved. I reminded them last week that none of these characters were in existence before – they’ve created them from inside their heads – and shaped them themselves.

Tomorrow the students are going to write a piece for the blog each about what they learnt from the project, what they found challenging, and what they’d do differently next time. And next week (hopefully) they’ll be presenting them to junior classes and parents. It’ll be a good moment, and we’ll have the camera out.

Diana Neild