Teachers: your best creative writing ideas please!!!

[plasticinemachine]

Ok a bit of help required! I am doing a creative writing session next week with four children of varying abilities and aged between 7 and almost 10. I need a knock your socks off, one-off creative writing session which lasts one hour. In the new year I will have this group once a week for 10 weeks (private tuition) & I am just doing a trial session before xmas to see what level they are at & so forth.
I want something a bit hands-on & really engaging & fun. So any ideas? What's the best creative writing lesson you have planned?
I will be doing animation with them in the new year, so please nothing which involves technology. Just a simple but effective lesson that will suit a range of abilities. Thanks!

[elfycat]

I'm not a teacher but I am an avid creative writer.

One suggestion I would have is to look at the workbooks in the Young Writers Program link Resources on the bar and then select workbooks. The PDF's are free to download and then you might be able to work with them. If not then it might inspire ideas of your own. Or give you headings to work with.

They're arranged by age order (USA system). I used the Middle School book on an 11 year old who attended meet-ups with her grandfather last month. She particularly loved the dialogue pages with the blank characters where you fill the speech bubbles in.

Good luck.

[elfycat]

(page 45 of the middle school booklet)

[AsBrightAsAJewel]

Have you seen Pie Corbett's stuff?
If not google "Pie Corbett" or "Talk for Writing".

[ArabellaRockerfella]

You need literacyshed.com in your life!!
It has very inspiring and creative ideas.

[Galena]

Look at Pie Corbett's Magic Box poem

[plasticinemachine]

Ah thanks people, some great links:) Funnily enough Magic Box was a poem I was considering working with, just wasn't sure how.
Will check all links, thanks again!

[MrsKCastle]

Magic Box is great. You could bring in a really interesting box, encourage them to guess what's inside and then show them one or two items that are special to you but don't look valuable e.g. a seashell.

Picture books are also really good for inspiration- something like Tuesday by David Wiesner (a book with almost no words- it shows what happens when frogs learn to fly for an evening).

Or get together a set of 'character' objects (crown for a queen/ king, black cat for a witch, sack for a postman etc), a set of 'settings' (model tree for a forest, grey ball for the moon, toy boat for a beach) and a set of 'magical' objects (ring, book, bag, pen). Ask the children to pick one object from each set- best done without looking e.g. pick from a feely bag- and then work out what the stoy is. E.g. why did the queen go to the moon? How did she get there? What magic power did the pen have and how did it help her?