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The Creative Writing project was started by
Julie Laslett and Caroline Webster, after a holiday to The Gambia in
January 2011.
Julie (an ex-teacher and now director of
Dramatic Media -
see website) and Caroline (actress, director and photographer
-
see
website)
had worked together previously, creating education resources for
English and PSHE. During their visit to The Gambia they were struck
by the absence of any creative writing in the schools’ curriculum,
despite all teaching and learning delivered in English.
The Gambian people are proud of the fact that
they speak English, but for cultural reasons, plus the lack of
literature resources, their use of the English language is extremely
formal. Textbooks tend to use formal texts, either written or
translated by writers for whom English is not their first language.
Formal English is fine for use in a formal context, but for any
context outside of the ‘formal’, it is extremely limited and often
inappropriate.
Julie and Caroline therefore decided to
create a resource specifically for The Gambia, aimed at stimulating
creative thinking and enhancing the vocabulary and context of the
written word.
The resource focuses on storytelling and
writing, examining the structure and key features of fictional
stories, with a modelling approach to generating content and the use
of descriptive language.
Through their contacts with the Albion School
in Banjul, the SOS Senior School, and Pippa and Ian of Pageant,
Caroline and Julie delivered a series of one-day workshops to
teachers and trainee teachers in January 2012. The aim of the
workshops was to assist teachers in understanding and writing short
stories, and learning how to use the resource with pupils in their
own classroom.
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Trainee Teachers at the
College
writing their first ever short story |
Caroline Webster and
Trainee Teachers
with their copy of the creative writing resource |
The workshops were great fun and extremely
well received by the Gambian teachers, and by the end of each day,
all of the participants had written their first ever story and
enthusiastically took away a copy of the resource.
So What Happens Next?
After the success of the workshops, and the
enthusiasm of the teachers in The Gambia, the aim is to support and
develop the project further under the auspices of Pageant.
In order to achieve this, two initiatives are
under way. Firstly, Julie and Caroline will oversee the creation of
an Exemplar Scheme of Work that will give Gambian teachers clearly
structured lessons for one term. The style of teaching required to
deliver the Creative Writing project is very different to the formal
methods used in The Gambia, and therefore the resource needs to
carefully scaffold and model not only the learning content for the
pupils, but also the delivery notes for the teacher.
The Exemplar Scheme of Work is currently in
development, and once it is written, will be sent to all of those
teachers who attended the workshops. It will also be available for
download from this site.
Secondly, (and this is where you can join in
the fun) Julie and Caroline also plan to run a training day for
teachers interested in delivering and supporting ‘Creative Writing’
in The Gambia. If you would like to get involved and find out more,
please get in touch.
The Story Bank
Teaching resources are scarce in The Gambia,
and there are very few fictional texts available. Therefore, Julie
and Caroline would like to develop an online story bank, providing
Gambian teachers with fictional resources appropriate to their
learning needs.
The first three stories are currently
available on this website, and include two fabulous tales that were
devised by teachers during the workshops. Both ‘Morike The Hippo’
and ‘The Song Of Peace’ are charming, quintessentially African
tales, and deliver a clear moral outcome.
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If you are an English teacher or budding writer, and would like
to write a short story, we would welcome your work in our story
bank.
For further information please email Pageant
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To explore descriptive
language,
the class take on the role of 'Morike' the hippo |
The criteria for stories are:
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Stories should be aimed at a reading age of
10 to 14 yrs
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Stories should be culturally relevant to
African children
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Each story should be approximately 3000 words
long
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Stories should adhere to the structure of
storytelling as set out in the resource, and include key features of
fictional writing e.g. descriptive language, simile, metaphor,
dialogue etc.
To read the stories and see annotated
versions for the teacher, click on the links below (PDF documents)
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If your browser
doesn't handle PDF files, you can download the Adobe Reader
here. |
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Note - some of these PDF
documents will be displayed sideways initially. It doesn't
matter whether you are using the Adobe PDF Reader or a PDF
plug-in on your browser, you can get the correct orientation
by 'right clicking' your mouse, and selecting 'rotate
clockwise'.
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