Students get creative on six-week writing course

Dr Jenny Cavanagh of St Sampson’s High School has been running the workshops for four years, using methods learned in her creative writing PhD to teach around 40 students from Years 7 to 10.

‘Not only does it boost their creativity and writing but also helps a lot with their confidence, it’s quite a freeing process and we also include a section where they share and edit each others work,’ said Dr Cavanagh, who is also an English and media studies teacher.

The methods include free writing, where students are given 10 minutes to write whatever comes into their heads, rule-based stories, such as no verbs or adjectives, and using different objects as inspiration.

Year 7 student Jane Van Der Watt said it was refreshing to learn English outside of a classroom.

‘I’ve really liked finding new ways to put my thoughts into words, in school we just get set a task and one way to do it, but here there are lots of different paths to try,’ she said.

‘My favourite exercise was picking a word. I picked anger, pretending it was an animal in a box and then describing how it would feel to put your hand in that box.’

Fellow Year 7 student Satang Yusong said her favourite was the free writing.

‘It’s great because it shows me how my brain works and makes me think in a different and deeper way,’ she said.

Stories written over the course were compiled into an anthology with its cover art being designed by 12-year-old student Joey Phillipe.

‘I did the outlines first and then used coloured pens to fade the colours in,’ he said.

‘I enjoyed the writing course, the rule exercise was fun but hard.’

Year 7 and 8 students took sessions once a week during school hours with Years 9 and 10 twice.