Creative Writing

We have been attending the creative writing workshop for the past few weeks at Rochdale Library. The twins have embraced it with all their efforts and their creative juices are flowing. Before we attended the sessions getting them to write anything down was always a bit of a task, both of them had a bit of a block when it comes to writing. they have the ideas, lots of them but they were very reluctant to put them down on paper.

We have gone against all convention as I noticed that the reason they were reluctant to put anything down on paper was due to spelling errors, they have trouble spelling things correctly and they know instinctively that it is wrong and this seems to have knocked their confidence in putting pen to paper. I reassured them that it was ok and the only thing that mattered was getting their ideas on paper, not to worry about spelling right now as they can go back and change what they want to later on, it was the getting the ideas down that were the important thing. since I did that they have flown and we are getting pages of writing in a short space of time.

The block of worrying that the spelling was wrong had a massive effect at holding them back, they are now very confident to put things on paper.

They know the basic grammar rules and we work on them constantly going over them on the computer using khan academy and a few work books that we use, so getting them to use these rules and incorporate them into their writing is something we will have to focus and work on.

Using the computer and workbooks is very different to writing your own words on paper, it seems to be very daunting for them, where as the computer and workbooks they breeze through.

Oliver reads an awful lot, he has a book constantly in his hand, Olivia however is not so keen although she does have her moments.

Oliver managed to write a whole page of instructions on how to do the recovery position when he was at Badgers the other week, just from his own head and what he remembered of the instructions, I was very impressed, this is the first time he has confidently written anything at badgers without getting frustrated because he couldn't keep up, he has come on leaps and bounds just with the few sessions of creative writing we have had and taking the focus off spelling mistakes.

Olivia I feel is still struggling a little bit, I will continue to encourage her to keep up with her  journal writing.

The facilitator at the writing group has noticed how much the kids have enjoyed the sessions for the past 6 weeks and has decided to continue the sessions, he will come up with some more themes to work with and after a short break will get us all to reconvene for some more creative writing.