Hello! My favourite thing is to be invited into schools so I can do my Seven Secrets of Storytelling show. Usually it takes 60 minutes, and I like best to perform it to the entire school at once.
(Sometimes teachers say: ‘But we’re not sure that Year One can concentrate for that long!” but I’ve never ever had a problem with that. If you can do a really good impression of Iggle-Piggle, I find, then they listen, just fine. And if you can do an impression of Iggle-Piggle, who’s just attached an engine to his little boat, then they roar with laughter).
After that, I generally tour round the classes doing workshops. For KS2, I love to teach a class called Six Cool Techniques To Get Into Your Writing (so you go up two grades). This will involve a gallop through Simile, Metaphor, and all that; it will also involve one great trick that will mean you can use the techniques, so they actually sound good.
I also do an Able Writing Day, in which thirty G and T kids from a surrounding area gather in a host school, and we have a glorious day together.
Typically, this will involve an opening session, which will focus on fun, and free creativity. We usually devise a story together, and they’ll do a little pair work. Then we do The Twelve Steps Of A Classic Tale, which always leads to them going on their own Guided Visualisation, so that they see their own material. Then after lunch the focus is on Getting It Down On Paper: we canter through tricks of great writing, and it all builds up to the magic moment when I say: ‘And now, I’d like you to take out your pens, and I want you just to write…’ By this time their heads are usually bulging with ideas to get down, and techniques to use, and I enforce strict silence, as they disappear off into their own imaginary worlds…
If you’re interested in booking me for this, you can e-mail me here, or get in touch with Authors Abroad who handle my diary for this sort of thing. You can try Nick@caboodlebooks.co.uk You could also go and look at www.authorsabroad.com