Today we dove straight into class with the year 9 group, who, again, are doing horror. What we had planned for them today was a couple of activities to help them get comfortable with writing their own stories.
The first thing we did with the class was to get them to write stories that were between one and thirty words long. The point of this exercise was to allow them to get a small preview into what they will be doing for the longer story they will be writing with us.
Niamh and I showed them examples of these stories that we found online through a powerpoint, and brainstormed a few ideas with them on what would be scary in a horror story. Some ideas that the students had were clowns, darkness and sharks.
We let them get on with it, Niamh and I writing our own stories from their suggestions, and after a few minutes asked them to show us what they'd done. There wasn't one story that we weren't impressed with, all of the students had amazing thirty word or less stories and we got them to stand up at the front of the class and read out what they'd written or, if they didn't want to, we read it for them. Below are some examples of the student's work.
"I entered my room, a beautiful doll was sitting in my bed. I turned around, something fell to the floor, I looked again. She was sitting in my chair with a knife." - Written by Valeria.
"I got up and saw I was covered in a red sauce. It smelled like if someone was bleeding. Then realized it was me, the red sauce." - Written by Maria.
"If I think of them I remember their screams and my hands turn red, you never forget all those murders." - Written by David.
"I still don't know why my bed creaks at night, I just know those hands aren't yours." - Written by Alonso.
Following this, we asked them to think about how they would expand on these stories. If they were asked to write what came before this, what would they write? If they were asked to write what came after this, what would they write? Does their story feel like a beginning, or an ending?
The next class with them was spent playing a word game. The point of this exercise was to get the students to think on the spot, which could help when writing a story when you're just throwing all your ideas down on a page. The rules of the word game was that the students sit in a circle, and a single person would say one to three words, and then the person next to them would continue it with one to three words, and so a story would be formed. There would also be a person assigned to stop the game/story when they felt the need, which is a huge help in teaching them when and where they should end a story.
While the students were creating their stories either myself or Niamh wrote them down and, after they had been stopped, we read the story back to the students and asked them questions for them to be thinking about if they were asked to expand on the stories themselves and bring the story their own way rather than relying on other people. Here are some of the stories that were formed from the game:
"The man in
the forest was with a big deer who had killed everybody in the
forest. They had cut down all the trees because these were bad people
who gave infections to all the deer. In the past, these people were
hunters, violent hunters. Young people and bears. The bears were very
big and round and had a lot of fur. They were as dangerous as a tiger
and nowadays they eat people."
"At night-time the clowns all met. Then
the children screamed into the clowns faces. They were shouting
because of their nightmares. They ran away quickly. They were
exhausted and realized when they looked back that the clowns were
chasing after them. The kids that behaved badly screamed again."
"Their eyes turned into diamonds when
the guys woke up. Their eyes were shiny and looked bright and blue.
But these became incredibly imaginable. When the guys saw each other
they started to laugh because they wanted them to be as enjoyable as
a banana."
"Once upon a time there was a
house where little children with witches ate crying because they were
afraid of not having more sweets. The witches were spooky and ugly.
They treated children like as if they weren't children."
Apologies again for the lack of pictures. Hopefully we will receive permission to upload photos of the students soon.
In the evening, Niamh and I spent time writing this blog, and while proofreading a blog that Niamh wrote I, once again, pointed out Niamh's excessive use of commas.
Comma comma comma comma comma Chameleon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmcA9LIIXWw
We'll see ourselves out.
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