All our Transition Year students enjoyed a day-long BLAST Creative Writing Workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday with Simone Schuemmelfederfrom Storygate Ireland. This was a fantastic opportunity for our students to engage in creative writing and explore topics such as setting, plot, character, timelines, description. This workshop seeks to build upon and reinforce knowledge and skills students have acquired in Junior Certificate English. The skills students practiced and developed will provide a foundation for the essay question in Leaving Certificate English as well as deepening their critical responses to literature. The workshop included different stages such as warm-up activities, brain-storming activities, word games and writing exercises aimed at stimulating ideas and springboards for writing . Students had free writing time in the afternoon which allowed students to work on their own drafts and also help each other in peer editing of each other’s work in draft format.
BLAST - Bringing Live Arts to Students and Teachers aims to provide pupils in schools all over the country, time and the space to work with a professional artist/creative practitioner on imaginative and joyful projects. BLAST is a key Department of Education initiative of the Creative Youth Plan 2023-2027 which aims to foster creativity in schools focus and to provide young people with opportunities to learn and develop the key skills and competencies of collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, and innovation.
We wish to thank Limerick Education Centre for providing this opportunity to our school and also Simone Schuemmelfederfrom Storygate Ireland for facilitating these fantastic two days for our students.
Feedback From Simone:
"It was a great pleasure to work with the transition year students! We explored the art of creative writing together, looking at how to create detailed characters, settings and story problems. We also looked at how to use the five senses in your writing to draw your readers into your story. The students showed great creativity and interest and launched into their writing - some even surprising their teachers with the quality of their writing and their ideas! Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to seeing many more stories written by you."
Bio from Simone Schuemmelfeder
Simone is a storyteller and writer from Germany. Born close to the Fairy Tale Road in Germany, which connects the locations of many tales the Brothers Grimm collected, Simone grew up surrounded by stories. When she moved to Ireland, she founded the storytelling theatre StoryGate (www.storygate.net) together with Irish teller and puppeteer Michael Phelan. She has performed extensively across Ireland and abroad in schools, libraries and at festivals. Simone offers a unique storytelling experience for children and teenagers with shows and workshops that combine storytelling and puppetry, science and creative writing. She trains both adults and children in storytelling and creative writing and runs Ireland’s only Writing group specifically for children’s book authors at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin."