Happy New Year everyone!

2019 was an eventful year. It started in Chennai, India with my parents and took me on a journey to festivals and conferences across the world.

I was in Houston to participate in Texas Book Festival, then at SCBWI Europolitan Conference as a keynote speaker and had a quick stopover in Dubai for the Emirates Festival. Each festival gave me different perspectives on reading, stories and more. I met children from many different backgrounds, writers with aspirations and passion to tell new stories and although journeys are tiring and routine-breaking, they bring new energy into the writing.

I had six new books come out in 2019, that I’ve been working since 2017 and 2018. They were all different and challenged me in new ways.

I took on new challenges like writing a theatre show that I performed with a wonderful friend. I was part of a theatre devising group and we performed to an audience of five. I was briefly on BBC talking about diversity in children’s books.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-48225791/bame-the-children-s-bookshop-selling-diversity

I visited many schools, met with teachers and librarians across the world, told stories, inspired new tales with young people of all ages.

2020 is gearing up to be a busy year too. I can already reveal the cover of two new books that I wrote which will be published. Here is a quick glimpse – I’ll be posting more info soon. Watch this space.

While fake news, nationalism and climate crisis threatens goodwill and existence of our planet, this is a time for stories – to imagine a better life, to mine for wisdom from lessons learnt in the past and sculpt a new world for our future generations.

I wish you all a wonderful 2020 in which hope reigns despair and acceptance wins over hatred.

MAKE WRITING FUN IN SCHOOLS – PART 3/3

In the first part of this series of blog posts, I talked about how to introduce creative writing in schools in a fun way. Then in the second part I talked about why it’s important to build an imagination muscle and flex it regularly.

In this final part, we will look at how to practice all these ideas in a busy and often assessment filled curriculum. Children will love reading and writing if there is much more of a self-invested motivation. So these are some ideas for both teachers to practice and practice in their classrooms with students.

Practice What You Preach

a) Start (or end) every day / lesson with a related prompt and a writing activity. Whether you’re going to be discussing mountains in a lesson about landforms or about adjectives in an English lesson, you can start with a poem or a story prompt related to the lesson. Get them to write a simple 4-line poem or a 6-line story about an adventure over a mountain using the terms they would have learnt in the previous session.

It’s a great way to revise and apply, improve comprehension because the concepts you taught have to be understood to be thrown and mixed into a story.

b) Start a writing journal – the teacher, the TAs and the students could keep a writing journal where they could write a few lines every day in one of the classes (and draw) to comment on, discuss, share their thoughts on the day or the lessons or their break-time. Whether you are an adult or a child, professional or an amateur writer, a topic or theme or a prompt would help initiate the writing process so they are not staring at a blank page.

c) Start class or school assemblies with word prompts – if the entire school is buzzing about a word – for example – umbrella – every child’s story would be different yet would have been triggered by the word umbrella.

d) Collaborative writing and drawing is a brilliant way to reduce the amount of writing each child has to bear and a great way to promote collaborative working within groups. Discuss stories, get children to work in groups to create a book, draw a cover, do the blurb, get inside writing and illustrations. It’s important that teachers take an active part in these activities to bring a sense of “we’re all in it together.”

A teacher’s drawing
A child’s drawing of the same scene

e) Display teachers’ and children’s work alongside in classroom and school displays. Choose a topic and let everyone write a story or a poem or draw and pin it up. Be brave – the less children stress about sharing their work, less pressure to write. It increases joy and reduces the fear of criticism. And teachers should lead the way by displaying their work.

Make Writing Fun in Schools – Part 2/3

In 2018 alone, I’ve done over 200 workshops in schools across the UK and US. Often teachers ask me how to interest children in writing – without them groaning and moaning, whining and whinging.

As part of my school visits or in specialised sessions, I work with teachers to help them bring fun into creative writing in schools.

The first blog post with suggestions and ideas for activities is here.

In this post, let’s look at FLEXING THE IMAGINATION MUSCLE!

Please feel free to try them out in your schools and when it works, do send me photos, emails, tweets to share the news with me.

 

 

 

 

Like any other skill, tapping into your imagination is a skill that needs to be practiced. We need our brains and creative energy to be agile and supple to take what’s around us or given to us and make them into stories. Humans have been telling stories for millions of years. Good storytellers not only practice dipping into their inner subconscious but also keep their language and cognitive abilities honed and tuned for that one killer story they want to tell.

So here are ways by which teachers can keep the imagination muscles of their children flexed and ready for that day when you want them to write stories, poems and get going with the writing.

  1. Word Association Games – this improves the vocabulary and at the same time can be fun and competitive in class. It can be played in groups or one to one, it can be a great tool not just to improve imagination, but also to build comprehension and spelling skills.

There are many ways to play this game – but my favourites are these two:

The first one – is simply to generate interesting nouns and verbs.

  • Pick a random word from a hat, from a book, or from around the room.
  • Now the group should come up with five different related nouns and verbs. If the associated words are not obvious, they should be able to explain why they chose it. Remember, there is nothing right or wrong about their choice – but we are flexing their imagination as to why they associated those words with the added benefit of comprehension.

The second one is a story-starter. Again it can be played individually or in groups

  • Open the dictionary to a random page, find a noun a
  • Ask the following questions:
    • Who owns this?
    • What does it look like?
    • Who wants to steal it?
  • The teams should write down the answers and start their story from here.

2. What-If: This is a great way to trigger the out of box ideas. This technique is also used by most professional writers.

In a classroom setting, you can start off with a prompt – either an image or a physical object or a word.

Here is an example.

What if my Grandma’s chair is a time travelling machine?

Once you have generated a question that has potential, the team should then dig further into the what-if and keep continuing until they see the story emerge.

So continuing from the above what if – here are my next three.

What if she sits and is transported to the Bronze Age?

What if she took my maths homework with her and I need it back?

What if I went after her and had to rescue her from the Bronze Age humans?

 

Want more tips?  Find out more at www.chitrasoundar.com/kids/?p=314

Make Writing Fun in Schools – Part 1/3

In 2018 alone, I’ve done over 200 workshops in schools across the UK and US. Often teachers ask me how to interest children in writing – without them groaning and moaning, whining and whinging.

As part of my school visits or in specialised sessions, I work with teachers to help them bring fun into creative writing in schools.

Over the next three blog posts, I’ll be sharing those ideas with all of you. Please feel free to try them out in your schools and when it works, do send me photos, emails, tweets to share the news with me.

In my opinion, there are 3 principles to teaching and guiding creative writing in schools.

#1 – Make it Fun

#2 – Flexing the Imagination Muscle

#3 – Practicing what you Preach

In this post, let’s look at FUN!

It’s no secret that children and adults, do more of what they enjoy. Whether it’s exercise or sports or watching television, it applies. So the first rule is not to force creative writing down the throats of children, especially if they are struggling with writing or spellings or school work.

Here are 10 ways to introduce creative writing in a fun way.
  1. Teach the children to write jokes and riddles. There is no end to their joy when you let them loose on each other with their little scraps of paper filled with their riddles.

2. Be Roald Dahl for a day – Read funny and strange words in class and ask children to make up new words. Check this out. https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/jun/14/roald-dahl-dictionary-best-gobblefunk-words

3. Create a class newspaper – fill it with jokes, cartoons, news, advertisements. Check out this fake newspaper generator – https://newspaper.jaguarpaw.co.uk/

4. Write a letter to their favourite author or illustrator or even an imaginary one.

5. Write a recipe for something strange like a witch’s potion or a dinosaur’s cough medicine or the giant’s breakfast. 

6. Write book reviews / movie reviews or video game reviews

7. Write a blurb for an unwritten book or a book they’d love to read

8. Author and illustrator visits especially authors from different backgrounds

9. Enter writing competitions like BBC 500 words (Have you been a judge before? Try your hand.)

10. Create an anthology for the school library with children’s work – get them to submit to a deadline. Use ICT classes and English lessons to encourage them to work on it. Once the book is done, add it to the library and lend it to children like a regular book.


If  you wish to bring Chitra into your school to run workshops with both teachers and students, see here.

The Launch Celebration of You’re Snug With Me

Yesterday we launched the second book You’re Snug With Me in the You’re With Me series at Chestnuts Primary School in North London.

It all began when the librarian Tanya Efthymiou of Chestnuts Primary and I tweeted to each other about a school launch for the next book. It would be fantastic to share the new book You’re Snug With Me with children and parents, and teachers, we thought.

And the idea was born and we took it to the wonderful team at Lantana Publishing who embraced it with wholehearted support.

Then we decided on a date that worked for everyone, we designed an invitation, we planned the day and it all came together wonderfully yesterday.

First I met with Reception and Y1 children before the big event in the evening. Then we decorated the hall with the help of amazing library helpers who had read the book and wanted to be part of the launch.

Y6 had done a project on plastics and the ocean and had used art work inspired from both You’re Safe With Me and You’re Snug with Me. It was brilliant to see how the books transcend from the confines of its form and reaches the readers.

As the bell rang for the final time that afternoon, parents and children started filing in.

We started with a storytelling from the book in which children joined in enthusiastically and then Alice Curry, publisher of Lantana Publishing spoke about books for under-represented children and why reading the 1% was so important.

Then it was party time – colouring in masks and colouring sheets kindly given to us by the illustrator Poonam Mistry, who couldn’t make it to the launch (we missed you!). I signed loads of books for parents and children, the school and the library too.

What a surprise, I had an author friend Paul May who came to celebrate the launch with me too!

All in all, a wonderful way to celebrate the publication of a new book. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Chestnuts Primary School who came to the event, helped us make it a success. A special Woot-Woot to  the head-teacher Mrs Katie Horwood and librarian Tanya Efthymiou who hosted us.