St James School Writing Group

Friday 27th August 2010

We had an absolutely terrific session today. Everyone was involved in creating illustrations and providing information for the big final paste-up of the edible garden picture book that we have been working on for the last few weeks. We worked solidly from about 9.15 am to almost 12.45 pm. Enthusiasm was running so high, we could have easily continued all through lunchtime.

We decided to keep the 16 pages of the book separate so that if they need to be scanned they can be done page by page and then collated and bound after printing.

The students in this group, I think, have learned a lot about the need to plan and organize material for a book in stages rather than leaping in and trying to produce finished work in one go. The concept of making roughs is something that had to be learned. It doesn't seem to be natural to children to do this. I have really enjoyed working with this group and have become good friends with them. I'll be sorry to say goodbye on Monday at the end of our final session.

We have come a long way since our first morning together. It has been a most worthwhile exercise and one that I will always remember. I hope that the children feel the same and think back on this experience as something they really enjoyed and got something important from.

Gavin Bishop

Day 3 St James School, Aranui

Friday 13th, 2010

We had a very positive and constructive session today. Everyone in the group has put of lot of time and commitment into writing a story for us to use as the basis of the book we are planning together. We spent most of the time today listening to the stories. Everyone read their own and I was impressed with how many had put my suggestions from last Monday into place. There was some good discussion about use of language and structure. Everyone was alert to the importance of having a good introduction, a middle and a conclusion. One of the boys could even remember the difference between a story told in 1st or 3rd person.

Then the hard part came. We voted for the story that we thought should be used in the group project. Two stories were chosen and I have left the teacher, Judy Parry, with the task of helping the two writers combine and reduce their texts before I return in a weeks time. The rest of the group are to continue collecting information about planting and growing an edible garden. When I return to St James we should have enough material to start designing the final 16 page book. I will show them how to use a storyboard to organize the text and pictures and then we will transfer the contents into a dummy. This will probably take up most of the last 3 sessions.

Gavin Bishop

Second day at St James School Aranui

9th August 2010 - I spent the 2nd and much more constructive day with the group of young writers at St James School Aranui. Their teacher, Judy Parry, is keen to include a fantasy story about vegetables and gardens into the book that the group is writing about growing an edible garden. I think this is a good idea too. It will lighten the contents and most likely make the final product more interesting to other readers. However, this is creating quite a challenge for the group that I am working with. They have all written stories but most of them wander all over the place and are not very interesting yet. I don't think these children are strong readers so they have very few role models for good story telling or just writing in general. We started todays session with looking at the structure of a story - the beginning, the middle and the end. We agreed that a good story often introduces a character or characters in the first part. A problem or some other incident happens in the second part and the the resolution takes place in the third part. The group spent about an hour writing new stories with this structure in mind. Judy and I moved around the room helping where we could. Some of the children filled a couple of pages in an exercise book very quickly. They seemed to be grabbing ideas from what they could hear being discussed around them. Vegetables having a hard time with monsters and sometimes werewolves cropped up in a lot of stories.

In the second half of the morning I spent time with each member of the group individually. I wrote a list of questions about their stories that they are to thing about and answer before I see them again on Friday.

Gavin Bishop