Creative Writing Course for 8-11 Year Olds

The course will start on Wednesday 22nd of January at 4.15pm and will run for 8 weeks (until 19th March). This will be followed by an event on Saturday 22nd where our budding authors will have the chance to share their work with family and friends. The course costs £32 for the 8 sessions (equivalent to £4 per session). There may be a small additional charge for writing books/ final printing of the work.

The sessions will be run by Kate Miller, a local writer, editor and storyteller with considerable experience in developing the creative potential of writers of all ages. For a number of years she ran a popular after school writing club at Bengeo School for KS2 children and she also does storytelling with puppets, for children from nursery class upwards.

Kate is a playwright: her play “The Last Witch” was on at Hertford Theatre in 2012 and her new production, “The Hertford Passion” will be seen in the town this Easter. She has had a short comedy broadcast on BBC radio and several productions at fringe theatres in London.

As secretary of Hertford Writers’ Circle, she helped publish the group’s new anthology “Four Rivers and a Castle”. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from University of Essex (2010) and a full CRB Disclosure.

Provisional Programme:

Jan 22nd: Opening Session - playing with nonsense verse. We'll all get to know each other and we'll start off by thinking about language and description by writing our own nonsense verse.

Jan 29th: Poetry - Building on the first session we’ll be looking at other poems and developing our own animal poems.

Feb 5th: Building Characters - We'll be moving on to thinking about character where we'll look at a selection of faces, give them names and characters and ask questions about their lives.

Feb 12th: Telling a Story - We'll be playing around with different voices this week and looking at ways of telling a story. We'll take inspiration from Anthony Browne's 'Voices in the Park' where the

event is told from different people's points of view. We will turn our attention to monologues and speeches and seeing how best to use rhetoric to maximise its effect.

Half Term - We'll take a breather over half term so that everyone can relax over the holiday break and will re-convene on the 26th.

Feb 26th: Starting the Story - We will return and dive headfirst into opening sentences so that we might consider the best way to start, what will be, our final pieces.

March 5th & 12th: Building the Story - For the next two weeks we will then look at the progress of our pieces and where we want them to go, getting into the really juicy middle bits of our stories and poems.

March 19th: Ending the story - This is where it all comes together and we finish off our pieces in style.

Saturday 22nd March: Join us at an optional sharing at 11am on 22nd March to celebrate the completion of our pieces with friends and family, who can come and see the masterpieces we've created.

Don't Forget Leaf also runs Book Club for 8-11yr olds. This takes place monthly on a Tuesday afternoon at 4pm. We are meeting next Tuesday 14th to talk about Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian (amongst others) and always welcome new members. Book club membership costs £4 and for this you get your own membership card and 20% off any of the book club books of the month from then on.

Any thoughts, feelings or questions on the matter then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us. Places can be booked in advance in the shop or over the phone and will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis!.

For more information visit http://www.leafcafe.co.uk/