Where I Live

Workshop: Where I Live

Intended audience: Year 7 and above
Duration: 3 hours (spread over a number of days/weeks – whatever suits you best, we can design it to fit your schedule)
Description: This project encourages young people to consider the positive aspects of the places where they live. The project will promote imaginative thinking, build writing confidence and help grow self-esteem and pride. It uses an engaging concept to help students learn and practice strategies that will make them better writers, and more confident people. The workshop is explicit about how to teach and support students to practice writing skills.

Writing skills learned include:

  • Writing brain warm ups
  • Making connections
  • Dynamic dialogue
  • Talking senses

There is also an option for students to share their writing with their families and the school community in a book that we produce together. If you choose this option I will guide the students through the whole process of creating a book: planning, research, writing and editing, working with images, getting an ISBN, understanding copyright, design, promotion and a book launch at your school. Please see the Create Your Own Book option for more details.

Cost: $1500 plus gst plus travel costs (IRD travel rate – 83c per km). You may be able to get funding assistance from Read NZ Te Pou Muramura.

“It was a great experience for me because it was the first time I had ever wrote a book and it was fun writing it with an amazing group of people from my school. I had the greatest opportunity to leave a legacy for my school and to be an author this young.”
Elizabeth.
St Mary MacKillop School.

“This project was such an amazing experience for the students. They were able to see the writing process that authors go through and were photographers for their own book. The biggest learning for these students was realising that they can ALL write and they ALL had the potential to be an author. It was definitely a confidence boost for our not so confident writers. All students felt that through writing this book, their voice would be heard by others. We have a rich resource to use as part of our reading programme within our school and one that all students will have a connection to.”  
Silo Metai-McCarthy.
St Mary MacKillop School.