Sunshine Heighs PS Writers Festival

Last month, the kids at Sunshine Heights Primary School had a Writers’ Festival at their school, organised by art teacher and writer powerhouse Francine Sculli (along with her in-school writers' group). First up there was a panel of guest writers: Meaghan Bell, Jennifer Down and me.

Jennifer is getting her first novel published, Meaghan is a poet and I've met Andy Griffiths. So we were kind of like rockstars. The audience was brilliant. They had questions upon questions and weren't afraid to double check the facts.
‘What was that metal word you used?’ asked a teeny front-row preppie.
A moment of confusion, but then Meaghan redefined meta(l)phors and similes (using an analogy, which I may have misremembered but the cuteness factor remains).
The preppie sat up straight, smiled, and confirmed: ‘So...a simile is the wind was like a feather. And a metaphor is the wind was a feather...but it’s not really a feather, it's a metaphor.’

Then the P/1/2 classes and I trooped over to the gymnasium to CREATE A PICTURE BOOK of our very own. First off I read My Teacher is a Monster, because it’s brilliant. But we had to keep things simple given our one-hour time limit. So five-page OPPOSITES books it was.

First off we workshopped some classic opposites: big/small, loud/quiet, tall/short, happy/sad.

But some kids were cleverer and more unique than that...

And some just loved sharks:

All the kids got right into it, even the ones who sometimes find it hard to concentrate in class. Even if they didn't finish all their pages I'm pretty sure each of them was proud to be a real author at the end of the session. It was absolutely the best day. The End*.

*except not the end. I would do it again right now.