Developing a Creative Writing Club in your Secondary School
Valentines Verse
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Valentines Verse project
Valentines Verse A programme of themes and ideas for new or established creative writing clubs. Designed and produced by Mark Grist as part of the Well Versed Poetry in School project Theme Love – through both poetry and prose Programme Length The first 6 weeks of a the winter term, through to Valentine’s Day. Final Event You have a lot of choice with this one. You could create a display which would be put up on the notice boards/ plasma screens/VLE in time for Valentine’s Day – perhaps complete with a Valentine’s delivery service in school. You could even have a Valentine’s Day/anti Valentine’s Day reading if you wanted. Suggested Equipment It totally depends on what you decide to create with this project – whether it’s a display or a collection of poems or an event for students to come to is your choice. Additional Notes Think about what other students would be interested in – does everyone have a positive view of Valentine’s Day?
Valentines Verse project
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Suggested activities Choose 5/6 of the following activities to do during club hours over 5/6 weeks. 1. Spend 45 minutes finding the best love poem/stories. Share them as a group and each explain what they think is so effective about the pieces. Pupils can then use them as inspiration for their own love poems in following weeks. 2. Pupils write a scene for a romantic comedy. Why not have one character trying to tell the other how they feel, but the information gets confused somehow. 3. Watch Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo nd Juliet and research the play, before pupils make their own modern day version of the story. 4. Create Valentine’s cards for other students to buy. Pupils could form a poetry takeaway service on Valentine’s Day and write messages on commission in these cards 5. Anti-love Poems Write an anti-love poem or a love poem to something people wouldn’t normally fall in love with 6. Pupils write a letter to an agony aunt about a relationship problem. Then swap the letters with each other and respond to someone else’s letter. 7. The Worst Date I’ve Ever Been On Pupils write their own piece – in any form they like – about bad dates. 8. Pupils go around school interviewing people about what they think love is. Then write them up into a list poem. 9. Create a huge wall display, one side with positive love stories/poems. The other side with negative anti-love stories/poems. 10. Research and create a presentation on the most famous couples of all time.