The Old Ideas Are Sometimes The Best Ideas ...

Hello everyone.  Brilliant session yesterday. 13 children came along including one newbie and, thankfully, I was there before 9.30, so no black mark for me this weekend!  Because we are only have two further sessions before the summer break, I went back to an old faithful for yesterday's session - acrostic poems.  This is a familiar concept to most of the members because if they haven't done it with us before, it is almost certain they will have done it at school.  The idea of taking the letters from a word and placing them vertically then adding a poetry line to each letter is one of the easiest forms of poetry and before long even the absolute novices were having a great time producing their acrostic poems, so a massive well done to everyone.

I also ran through the itinerary of our 5th anniversary session.  All being well, the Deputy Mayor will be in attendance and the idea is that he say a few encouraging words to the members and acknowledges the support given by the library staff.   He will also be presented with copies of Word Magic and  Word Magic 2  by longest serving member Amber.  If he has time, he may mill about among the children for a few minutes but he is only expected to be there for half an hour or so because of his tight schedule.  Also in attendance will be Jenny Crooks, who is involved with the Croydon Literacy Scheme.  Some members may recall the joint effort of a year or so ago where children from both groups produced their own book The Magical Quest.  Councillor Andrew Rendle will be coming along too.  He is the wonderful person that gave us the grant for the production of Word Magic 2.  Local writer Ciaran Murtagh is also a guest.  He gave a really inspiring talk to the Young Writers in 2014  so it will be wonderful for the newer members to also meet him.

I have advised the children to bring their own snacks and drinks and I will bring a cake.  If they want to wear something special that is fine but it will also be okay for them to just turn up in their comfy clothes, so there are no hard and fast rules here.  I  would also be grateful if the grown ups would stay with us on this day and share the celebration.

And on 15th July we have our final session of this school year.  I will be announcing the summer project then but prior to that, I'll bring along some notes about it on the 8th in case they are unable to make it on the 15th for whatever reason.

Look forward to seeing you all on the 8th then.

Oops! Late Mark for Jilly ...

I gave myself detention after I arrived half an hour late for last Saturday's session!  I am so sorry! First the train was cancelled, then half of Croydon was cordoned off so no buses could get through; it was a complete nightmare!  So you can imagine how touched I was when I walked into the library to see the Young Writers all seated, waiting patiently and the welcoming smiles that lit their faces!  I was originally tempted to cancel the session when I realised I was not going to get there on time.  But I am glad I didn't because, even though we had a much shorter session in the end, the Young Writers - champions that they are - still got stuck in to the latest exercise in what little time they had so huge, huge thanks to you all for your loyalty and your faith in me; you have made me feel very humbled.

So what we were doing was looking at a new way to create a story.  I presented the Young Writers with three beakers, one for TITLES, one for PEOPLE and one for PLACES.  They were invited to pick a paper from each and then use their three picks to plan a story.  What I had hoped was that they could each write their story and then swap their pieces of paper with someone else and try again. Unfortunately due to the time constraints we did not get to that stage but the assignment set was to take their paper pieces and their ideas home and create their stories there.

The point of this exercise is to challenge their imaginations and challenge is the right word because several Young Writers seemed a bit baffled by their picks.  How do you tie together an unlikely mix such as The Haunted School (title), the shop in the park (place) and Young Ali (character)?  But after giving a couple of brief examples to show that a new story can come out of anything I could literally see the penny drop with many of them, and once it had, off they went with their pens, heads clearly brimming with ideas.

In the end it turned out to be an excellent, if somewhat reduced, session and twelve children turned up so it was more of a success than a disaster!

Next session is on 24th June so see you there and, once again, thank you to everyone.

See You This Saturday

Here I am back from my wonderful holiday in Devon!  The weather was amazing and we really enjoyed the sights and sounds of this beautiful part of the country.

I hope the Young Writers have been busy with their letter writing and look forward to reading their completed assignments.  Don't forget our next session is this Saturday, 10th June, same time, same place.  I look forward to seeing you there.