Creative Writing Ideas

Mark Warner of Teaching Ideas deserves a lot of kudos for starting off another brilliant collaborative presentation. This one aims to provide ideas for inspiring writing in the classroom. Like the others (listed below) it starts with a few ideas and then relies on the teaching community to pool their knowledge via Twitter or by sharing the presentation and adding their ideas. It was 21 ideas when I started writing this, it’s now 24 ideas and growing (Fridge Magnet Poetry is #22)

Take a look and hopefully get inspired. and if you have any ideas to share, contact Mark and let him know.

A reminder that there are many more collaborative presentations produced by Tom Barrett (and friends)

• IWB Classroom Tips
• Google Earth Classroom Tips
• Pocket Video Classroom Tips
• Google Docs Classroom Tips

They are packed with ideas, and if you have any more please add to them!

Fridge Magnet Poetry

Here’s a fun activity from the Magnetic Poetry website - Fridge Magnet poetry. There are several sets of words to choose from. Drag the words and phrases onto the page to create your own poems. This is an activity you could make yourself in your IWB software with a lot of text boxes, but this site saves you having to think of all the words.

Digital Storytelling 2

While on the subject of Digital Storytelling, I found another website the other day that I'd like to share.

It's called Storynory and the idea behind the site is to provide audio files of children's stories. Some of the stories have some very nice illustrations to accompany them. And even better, the site is free!

There is a mix of classic stories, such as the Grimm fairytales and Aesops Fables but also some original stories unique to the Storynory site such as The Monkey Who Loved Chocolate.

The audio files can be played through the website, but can also be downloaded to be played offline, if that is easier for you to do so.

I don't know if the authors have plans to do anything more "whiteboard friendly" - maybe turn them into big books or anything like that. But for now if you want some nice stories for your class to listen to, then Storynory is well worth a visit.

Digital Storytelling 1

I received this comment on one of my posts last night, and I thought it was worth reposting. It's from a new children's author and you might find the videos fun to play to the class as a story starter activity;

I'm a young children's author. My first book, Hazel's Phantasmagoria, was published by Quercus in March. It was well reviewed, and has sold respectably, and I've just been commissioned to record a BBC audio book of it. Previous to writing it, I have worked as an actor in theatres like the Globe, the Birmingham Rep, and the Unicorn Children's Theatre.

I've now read in 3o schools this year, from Blackburn to Guernsey. The point of the readings for me is a) to promote the book, but b) to spend as much time with children as possible, getting their honest response - as I am neither a parent nor a teacher. I hope the schools I've read at have been pleased with my work.

I have recently recorded a film of me reading two chapters of the book, in the style of the old BBC Jackanory shows. I'd really appreciate it if you could perhaps post it on your blog, so i could get some feedback from people who know what they're talking about. The idea is to do something to bring the reading of childrens' fiction to Youtube, and the digital world.

You can see the videos here -

http://uk.youtube.com/user/leanderdeeny

and they're also on my website - which also contains any information about me you might like to know -

www.leanderdeeny.com

Any advice or feedback would be hugely appreciated - I really hope that these might be of some use in encouraging children to read.

If you do want to give the author some feedback, then visit his website, or leave comments in his YouTube channel.