Creative Writing High School Visits

I love running creative writing sessions for high school students.

As well as being a children’s author I studied English at the Australian National University.

I love to help even the most reluctant writer to come up with an idea for their story and I ensure there is time to work one on one with every student in the class.

I can run the sessions in person or virtually.

Guided creative writing workshop - create your own picture books

Year 7 - Year 12

Learning outcomes: concept books and three act structure picture books, literary devices, show don't tell and visual literacy

This is a guided creative writing workshop where students will write their own story. In the workshop I will explore the concept book and three-act structure and for creative writing.

In this workshop I will explore:

Two types of picture books with the students - 'concept books' for 0-3 year olds and the ‘three-act structure’ picture books for 4-8 year olds
Literary devices to make creative writing shine
The 'show don't tell' technique
The importance of visual literacy in picture books.

I will run a guided workshop with students to write one, or both, picture books. This includes stepping student through each page of a picture book structure. I provide several picture book templates and worksheets for the students to use in the workshop.

Testimonials

“Catherine has conducted an annual virtual workshop with my Year 12 Child Studies classes over the past few years, supporting their understanding of visual and written literacy in children's picture books. Her warm and calm demeanour immediately puts students at ease, encouraging them to actively participate in small group discussions and share their ideas. Catherine provides enthusiastic encouragement and constructive feedback on their brainstorming and concepts, fostering a positive and engaging learning environment. She has also gone above and beyond to develop and adapt resources to support the workshops as our assessment task requirements have evolved over time.”

Ruby Page, Teacher, Brighton Secondary School, South Australia

"As Year 12 students at Brighton Secondary School, we were very lucky and privileged to be able to work with a recently published Children's author. Catherine was excellent in her approach and planning on the lesson. As a class, we worked with Catherine through zoom, and it felt like she was in the room. Catherine made all the students have a good understanding of the language, structure, and importance of children's stories, to help improve childhood literacy. She provided us with a children's book structure that was relevant to Australia and then worked with us as a class to understand the structure. We found it really effective using the techniques, of brainstorming ideas in a group to start the foundations of a good story.

We were then able to put what we learned into place when we planned our children's storybooks. When we made our stories, we continually referred back to what Catherine had taught us and used her book" My Possum plays the drum" as a reference point for understanding the importance of rhyming words, Alliteration, the use of a blue page.

We were so lucky to be able to listen to an author for our assignment, it really helped with the planning, and made our storybooks created to a much higher standard."

Year 12 Student Testimonial, Brighton Secondary School, South Australia