Today there were only five Writing Timers: Sian (who turned 11 today- congratulations!), Greta, Freya, Ingrid and Edie. It was sooooo quiet for most of the session, with heads down low to the table-tops as hands flew across the pages....inventing, describing, reporting, matching, listing, rhyming...
Freya invented a new game, where she would list nine unrelated words at the top of her page, then write a piece based on linking all the words up into a meaningful paragraph. Edie, Ingrid and I were really into this new game, it forces the imagination to open up even wider than usual to accommodate all the words. Sian was busy collating facts on particular mammals which are usually overlooked by Australian scholars, eg. the Asiatic lion, or the wolverine. She would summarise these amazing facts from one of the Drawing Time reference books on mammals and read them to me. I learnt so much today from Sian, and all the girls. Ingrid was inspired to check out all the strange names for shark types and copy them onto the whiteboard. Did you know there was a crocodile shark?
And Greta was very busy creating such beautiful poetry. Here is her first piece that tumbled out into her little notebook in a matter of minutes:
"Rising Wind" by Greta Jakob
A song whistling in the wind comes out of its hiding place
Oh whistling wind Oh whistling wind
Will you sing me a song?
Greta and I collaborated on two poems also, using the "Pass it on (after one or two lines)" method.
One poem was about rain, the other about snow. This is where the white blanket of silence phrase was developed, summing up not just how snowfall appears in the night, but also how Writing Time can seem, when every girl is so engrossed in writing whatever she wants to write that the sound of a pin dropping on the carpet could be heard.
mars are you sure you spelt collecting right?
ReplyDeleteVery good observation, Edie! I chose to use the word "collating" rather than "collecting", as the meaning of "collating" is "collecting and combining". Sian was doing more than just collecting the facts and dropping them onto her page, she actually used her collection of facts to present a report in her own words.
ReplyDeleteYou've just given me a great idea! From now on, I shall deliberately misspell one word in every post, and then wait to see if it gets noticed by anyone! I'll have to make it difficult to try and trick clever readers such as yourself! Then with each new post, if the misspelt word from the previous post has not been detected, I will reveal the error. Tell the other Writing Timers and friends about this new game. you could look it up at school!