Wriggle Room Writers: session three – Plot by Marion Rose

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting the Year 3 classes from Burdett Coutts. These were the kids whose worryingly low literacy levels prompted the school to invite us in as writers in residence. I found both classes to be lively, focused and full of ideas. Our session was about Plot.
Whatever the piece of writing you are doing, it’s good to have a structure. So we began by reading “Georgie and the dragon” as an example of a quest story, and then looked at the usefulness of the number ‘three’. Three parts to a story – opening, middle and ending. And then, three obstacles or problems to give the middle of your story interest.
Before diving deep into planning their individual quest stories, both classes brainstormed a collection of action words that would help move their characters around, by land, sea and air. The resulting displays (to be continued) contained pooled vocabulary that was both useful and expressive.
We then played a game of two teams. The challenge was to invent some hair-raising problems and the ingenious solutions to them, that a character might meet on their journey. i don’t want to give too much away just yet, but some quite horrendous situations were devised along with some very imaginative ways round them…Year 3 are definitely the people I’d like to be stuck behind a spilled lorry load of cow dung with!
I gave the children some small books to plan out a complete story in and I’m really looking forward to seeing the amazing adventures that result. But judging by the sheer interest and enthusiasm that these children show, the best story of all may be that of their own journey and the challenges they will surely overcome.