In this one-off workshop, students will explore the vibrant artworks of Amy Claire Mills, a disabled and Neurodivergent artist working on Gadigal Land. Inspired by her bold and imaginative pieces, they’ll reflect on the kind of soft spaces—safe, welcoming places—they’d love to spend time in.
Truth might be stranger than fiction, but most of the time lying is more fun. In this workshop, students will play around with the truth to compose a short poem made up of false statements designed to amuse the reader.
What is freedom to you? It means different things to different people at different times. What if you could build your very own freedom machine? What would it look like? How would it move? Where would it take you? In this one hour workshop students will explore Kirli Saunders’ and Matt Ottley’s beautiful picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines. They will use this as a starting point to design their own freedom machine. Students will then write a one-stanza poem describing their machine and where they would use it to go to feel free.
Students imagine a hungry monster living under their couch and write about their first epic encounter with it as a narrative poem. Students will be guided through key aspects of the form and the use of various poetic devices including repetition and simile.
Calling all young ghost hunters and master storytellers! Students unleash their imagination as they create spooky stories and characters that will give you goosebumps! Students will learn how to build suspense, conjure eerie settings, and bring their characters to life.
First Nations people have tens of thousands of years of knowledge sharing the unique shapes and stories of the stars visible from this hemisphere. In this workshop series, students will explore the Star Stories of the Dreaming and consider the senses as they use poetic storytelling techniques to respond to stories from Aboriginal Astronomy.
In this workshop Story Factory guides students through an exploration of the creative techniques used by cartoonists to anthropomorphise objects and animals. Students will bring objects from their daily lives to life, creating unique characters, imagining daily activities and drafting dialogue. As students work through the writing process they will role-play interviews and create the content for various written texts including letters. A fun, engaging way to explore character creation!
Through different workshops week to week, all themed around food, students will be introduced to different literary devices, work with model texts and scaffolds, and bring their own tastes and passions to the table to write a collection of poetry.
In this workshop students will explore the artworks of contemporary Australian artists including Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, using their quirky and colourful pieces to inspire poetry. Students will learn to unpack visual art and expand their vocabulary. Bringing art to life by reimagining the stories and characters behind the works.
Students imagine they have travelled through a vortex and are now trapped inside the world of a retro video game called Video Vortex. They choose their own avatar who progresses through the strange and different levels of this game as they overcome obstacles to “level up” and return home. Students develop skills in sensory writing and focus on world building and narrative structure as they create short episodes/chapters that describe their experiences moving through the game.
Ever heard of Cheese Rolling in Coopers Hill, or Worm Charming in Willaston, or the Wife Carrying Race in Dorking? In this program students act as news reporters, sent to investigate the weird traditions of small towns with odd histories. They will create a monologue for their news report, summarising town traditions, and incorporating interviewing skills in their final piece.
Looking to share contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices with your students? Each week students will explore a track by Indigenous artists and use it as inspiration for their own lyric writing. They will learn about Indigenous cultures and languages from diverse communities around Australia, and will explore their own experiences and values as they write lyrics in such forms as rap and lullabies.
In this one-off workshop, students will engage with visual artworks by Dylan Mooney, a proud Yuwi man from Mackay, Queensland, with connections to the Torres Strait and South Sea Islands. He is an artist with disability who creates paintings, drawings, and digital illustrations in an exciting comic book style. Dylan’s artwork tells stories about strength, survival, and love. Your students will be excited by contemporary art practice and explore symbols. Students will create their own superheroes with a powerful talisman in the form of a short narrative. Students will develop skills to make their writing more personal, inventive and engaging.
In this short series students will have the opportunity to both rant and celebrate! Students will learn about the form, language features and history of the ode as well as some useful strategies for idea generating, using mentor texts and beginning a draft.
Experimenting with style? Considering the audience? Finding it all a little dry? This workshop gives students a chance to practise these specific English skills while engaging in a fun and interactive experience, drawing from two clashing formats - horror movies and letters of complaint. Students will practise mashing stylistic features, language choices, and genre conventions as they craft humorous pieces full of creative choices.
Okay, look, we’re kinda obsessed with stories. Books, movies, tv shows, webcomics, whatever. How do they make such awesome stories? And the CHARACTERS - I want to be their best friend. So sometimes we, kinda, sorta… just write stories about them. IT’S OKAY, it’s totally fine, it’s called fan-fiction!
The first step of learning is imitation. Students will set out to pay homage to the stories and characters they are fans of by using elements of other narratives (their styles, tones, and even their events) to craft original stories set in established universes (and sometimes alternate realities)!
So, as you may or may have not noticed, InstaPoetry is pretty big. These workshops introduce students to the genre, exploring the inventive ways the multimodal nature of Instagram is being used by young poets. Students will be led through a collection of engaging activities using different model texts, structures, and scaffolds, covering key poetic literacy modes and safe methods for student self expression.
In this workshop series students are introduced to the ideas of protest of art, with specific reference to work of Blak Douglas. Students will complete writing in various text types, responding to elements in the work of Blak Douglas and considering protest in their own writing.
In this series students will plan, write and edit a suite of very short short stories. Flash fiction provides young writers with a short, flexible medium to investigate story structure, characterisation and creatively engage with the mechanics of writing. Students will examine examples of flash fiction, brainstorm and experiment with their own flash fiction and reflect on the creative writing process. Students will gain confidence in experimenting with spoken language, hyperbole, metaphors and similes.
Have you ever had a nightmare you can't quite explain? In this workshop students explore prose poetry and surrealism as they prepare to write their own short horror narrative based on an alien invasion. They learn strategies for ideating and world building, and are exposed to models of writing that are fluid in form and rich in ideas and language features. Ideal for reluctant writers.
Founder, Home Education Rural and Remote Discussion (HERRD) Goup
Teacher, Thorndon Park Primary School
Teacher, St George Preca School
