CHILDREN´S WRITING- Fire children's imaginations
through storytelling
What makes little children tick? Tap into little minds and stir their
imaginations. Learn how to write for children across a range of genres and
gain the basics of editing and improving your work. Finally, use your new
skills to produce your own creative work for children.
COURSE STRUCTUREThere are ten lessons in this
unit, as follows:
1. Introduction: Understanding Children, their
thoughts, needs, development.
2. Overview of Children's Writing:
Categories (fiction & non fiction), understanding the market place;
analyse & understand what is needed for the different
categories, etc.
3. Conceptualisation: Conceiving a
concept...where & how to find inspiration/influence. Developing a concept
... how to plan.
4. Children's Writing for Periodicals:
Children's pages in magazines, newspapers, etc.
5. Short Stories
6.
Non-Fiction: Texts (writing to satisfy curriculum. Other (eg. nature,
history, biography, hobbies).
7. Fiction: settings,
characterisation, fantasy, science fiction, adventure.
8. Picture
Books and Story Books
9. Editing your work: Grammar, spelling &
punctuation. Improving clarity. Cleaning out clutter; expansions.
10.
Project - write a short story, picture book or kids page for a
(hypothetical) periodical.
AIMS
-
Describe children's cognitive development and target writing to be
appropriate to various developmental stages.
-
Explain the nature and scope of writing for children.
-
Describe the process of planning a written manuscript of children's
writing.
-
Describe the planning and processes involved in writing articles for
children's magazines.
-
Develop a short story for children to read.
-
Discuss the specific requirements associated with writing children's
non-fiction
-
Describe the various categories of children's fiction and the writing
processes involved.
-
Explain the scope and nature of literature aimed at young children.
-
Explain the scope and significance of editing skills and processes for
children's writing.
-
Plan, evaluate, edit and present a piece of writing for children
WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSEHere are just some of the
things you will do:
Develop lists of imaginary titles and brief
descriptions of stories that would be appropriate in your society (or
country) for children of different age groups.
Analyse the page(s) in a
text aimed at children in terms of language complexity and style,
conciseness of the writing, content, graphic layout, etc
Determine
concepts for children's writing.
Develop outlines that would help you
to write about each concept.
Develop a set of guidelines (or a plan),
that a writer should follow in regular preparation of a children's page
in a newspaper, and consider what, in your opinion, is
the purpose of a
children's page in a daily newspaper.
Discuss how you would approach
writing a comic, and why you think this would be the best approach for you?
Write
short articles or stories, suitable for situations such as: An educational
magazine, A preschooler or infant school age magazine or Aa teenage boy or
girl magazine
Write a short story.
Identify a non-fiction
book for children which you would be suited to write.
Write an
outline for a proposed non-fiction book. In your outline, you would
include a list of major subject areas (or chapters) that the book would
cover and a brief description of the content of each chapter. Include a
brief description of how the book would be illustrated (ie. are photos
appropriate, or line drawings, paintings, etc?). You would then write one
or two pages for your non-fiction book.
Write a fantasy, adventure
or science fiction short story for a 7-8 year old, which fits specified
criteria.
Write a story for a 5-6 year old child.
Edit some
sample short articles.
Plan, then write, a children's short story,
a picture book or children's pages for a newspaper.
