'South Africa Library Week' - another great creative writing guest post from @apeters522 from Parklands College

This is another guest post from Anthony Peters @apeters522 who is a very innovative English High School teacher from Parklands College in CapeTown who delights in using technology in the classroom creatively. We are always delighted to publish posts by Anthony. You can view all his previous posts on our blog via the Anthony Peters label under ‘Quick links’ on the right side. 

Grade 7 enjoyed a whole programme with a spectrum of activities for South Africa's Library Week. The foci of these activities orientated around improving setting and character descriptions for narrative writing.

The first app used was Tell A Tale and it provided the learners the first and last lines of a typical story, as well as three objects or characters. Learners were paired up and given only three minutes to compose a short one-minute story. 

After the time was up, they then had to read their creations to their partners! The aim of this was to encourage refined creative thinking whilst under pressure and also to practise the main elements of narrative structure (setting, challenge, climax and resolution). Despite the diminutive timeframe, the learners performed admirably and came up with an array of fantastical plots!

The following day, the learners freed their creativity with an Augmented Reality app called Quiver. The relationship between characters and young authors is often lost and so by colouring in a variety of templates, the Grade 7s actively engaged with the stimuli in order to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of characterisation.

After finishing the templates, the app brought the images to life off the paper and into 3D! Therefore, robot warriors, dragons and fireworks literally flew off the pages and joined us in the Learning Resources Centre! 

  

SchoolNet says:
Thanks for this post, Anthony. This writing lessons sounds like another of your really well thought out, exciting lessons that the students will long remember. Thank you again to you and the creative English Department at Parklands College in Cape Town for sharing this inspiring lesson with us.