Week 4 Term 3: Teacher Practice: Creative Writing - Year 9 English (August 12 - August 15)

9TRn presenting their Creative Writing

In Term 2, my Year 9 English class (9TRn) spent the term learning, creating and crafting their creative writing. Creative writing is one of our CATS (Common Assessment Task) that we do with our Junior English students (Year 9 and Year 10) in Term 2. For my creative writing task my students choose an image that are inspired from the short text study and craft their text based on the image. The students can use the same themes and characteristics from the short text but the plot and characters have to be their own original ideas. I documented the creative writing assessment and process that my Year 9 class in 2023 (9TKl) went through. You can see it in my blog post from last year (see the link below). 

Alby's Blog Post Entry - (25/06/23) 

In this post I am going to talk about highlights from the Creative Writing unit that I did with my Year 9 class - 9TRn in Week 8 Term 2 - Week 2 Term 3. 

Sharing their story

My Year 9 class this year went through the same process and I wanted to share some of the highlights from their journey through creative writing. One of the highlights that I loved was that the students shared the process that they went through with the: 

Crafting of their creative writing - what image did they choose and how did they plan their story. 

The Text - what is the story about, who are the main characters?

The creative process - Explaining the choices they made with book creator and why they decided to use what they used

This was a fun part of the process. We did this at the end of the unit (Week 2 of Term 3). It was good for the students to share their thought and creative process. Some students asked questions specifically about the story. 

9TRn sharing their Creative Writing + Book Creator Books

Although the short text study (Witi Ihimaera's 'Big Brother Little Sister') and the assessment was the same as last year, I am really encouraged and impressed with the writing that the students produced this year. We used the online application - Book Creator - for the students to create their online book once they crafted their creative writing. 

Book Creator Library for 9TRn

Creativity Crafting of Text

The students interpretation of the images that they chose was interesting, amusing and impressive. Many of them chose similar images from the slide deck I shared. The image that was used the most across the class was the image of the young boy and girl sitting on the bench in the city. The storyline in the creative writing followed similar sequences and themes - brother and sister going on an adventure or brother and sister fleeing from their home as a result of neglect. In which are similar themes to Ihimaera's 'Big Brother Little Sister'. 

There is comfortability and familiarity in writing about something that you know. There is a strength in that so I knew that the students understood the text well and wanted to craft a text (not as a rewrite but as completely new story). 

Here is an example from a student from my Year 9 class: 

"As the adventure began Lani and

Ben had a plan to go to his aunty

talas house who lives in glen innes

so they walked. Throughout his

journey they were walking for a long

time until his sister wanted to go pee

‘Ben can I go to the toilet?’,he said ‘

OMG we haven't even walked that

far’ after they searched for a tree or

a bush he waited for her to do her

business until she missed the tree ‘

uhh ben I think I wet myself’, he

said ‘eww fia fasi oe’ so he went and

gave Lani a slap on the head. They

walked and walked until they got to

the city. Lani said ‘ can we have a

break’ so they went and sat under

the laau for some shade. After a hot

day they were hungry so Ben went to

the dairy and bought some food

from the dairy."

Crafting Visual Aspect of Creative Writing

I am really impressed at our the students crafted their online books. The visual component of a text is important as it helps to visualize and bring the story to life. The students did an awesome job marrying the images (either AI generated or images that they found online) to their text. I did not guide them through this part and I did not give any guidance on this. Here is an example of the some of awesome visuals that my students used and created for their texts. 

9TRn Exemplar from Book Creator