Day 6 Des Hunt Waiotahe Valley School Thurs March 25 2011

“Ko Whangakopoikipiko ahau. Ko tenei taku pūrakau.”
“I am Whangakopikipiko. This is my story.”

Today is to be our final day with Des Hunt. It has been so busy, successful and rewarding. Our batteries are recharged after and extremely busy day yesterday. Most of our day was spent in final face to face interviews with Des and individual students. One of our students has started experimenting with illustrations to go with her work which is in the form of a sophisticated story book.

Most of the students had a final draft to go away with for their final edit before sending it to Des at some stage within the last two weeks of term.
For a finale, Des gave another one of his scientific, writing metaphor presentations. He was illustrating the element of suspense and surprise, particularly relating to the end of a story.


On behalf of Waiotahe Valley School I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Book Council, Des Hunt and the CORE Team for this invaluable experience. Our students have gained so much from this project.

Bridie Wilson

Day 5 Des Hunt Waiotahe Valley School Wed March 24 2011

“Ko Whangakopoikipiko ahau. Ko tenei taku pūrakau.”
“I am Whangakopikipiko. This is my story.”

Today was an incredibly industrious day. Every laptop in the school and writers families was employed to bring the students stories to print. Stories were finalised and to make the process of editing easier when Des left, we posted all stories electronically so that we could ‘track changes’ as authors and publishers do quickly between Des and the students.

Once the stories were committed to print and revised by the students it was time for Des to complete a second discussion with the students about next steps in the writing process for them and their writing.

The part of the day that the students responded to the best was the sense of achievement they felt as their first electronic version of their writing whirred out of the printer. The students learnt a great deal about how to use the more sophisticated components of Word and the importance of save, save and save your work!

Day 2 Des Hunt Waiotahe Valley School Friday March 18 2011

“Ko Whangakopikopiko ahau. Ko tenei taku pūrakau.”
“I am Whangakopoikopiko. This is my story."

Day two started with a fantastic presentation from Des. He had created a power point presentation which he augmented with little chemistry experiments. This presentation helped the students learn a little more about the relevance between the properties of chemistry and the structure of writing. Des explained the chemistry of ‘attraction versus repulsion’ in positioning characters which was well received by the students. He also illustrated with an experiment the importance of being precise and adding just the right amount of action or tension in the students’ writing.

We moved on to individual students planning for their stories. Des had shown in his presentation how he went to the computer straight way with his ideas. Des was very responsive to our Year 7 and 8 students using a ‘big picture approach to planning’ which involved using big pieces of paper and felt pens as he recognised that the students did not have the sophisticated word processing skills to commit their ideas to electronic print.

One of the skills that the students found helpful and learnt on the day was how to keep the reader interested in the story. Des read from his latest book The Peco Incident to illustrate how he does this, by telling a little story in a story. The students were then able to use this example as a model to follow in their writing. The students also liked the idea that they could begin to plan their own story and enjoyed creating their characters. The students responded best to the chemistry presentation, particularly the melting steel! This experiment was conducted to illustrate that if something doesn’t work in your writing then pull it apart and come at it again from another angle. This was a very affirming analogy as the students are involved in peer and self review. It was beneficial for them to hear that even experienced authors undo their work and have to rework it.

Throughout the whole day we all could have been forgiven in thinking that we were here for the purpose of writing. We were having so much fun learning.