Dave Cryer - Writing Workshops

13:26:45 o'clock BST

Updated 03-10-07

 

Latest news is that my new website is now live. At the moment I'm still building it, but it''s already better than this page... http://www.davecryer.co.uk

 

If you've already worked with me, you might be interested in two new workshop days for the Autumn term, 2007...

 

Booked Up ~ This is a drama day which involves exploring the 12 titles offered free this year to Year Seven pupils. You can have it as a round-robin style day, delivering one-hour workshops to different classes or as a day of deeper exploration for one group of Year Sevens. The aim is that they will be enthused to swap books with each other once they've received their chosen copy.

 

Boys into Books ~ This is a drama day for up to 30 pupils, where we will explore five titles from the SLA's long list of choices. My selection involves Dream On, Boy, Percy Jackson, Blood Beast & Tins, but you can choose your own selection for me to work with if you wish.

 

If you've not worked with me before, here are some details of what I do:

 

This page is aimed at anyone looking for a day of activities based around reading or writing.  My 'Dave Days' (coined by Doncaster librarians) will mainly appeal to librarians and teachers of English in secondary schools, but I am increasingly working in primary schools with Year 6 & Year 5 and this year have worked with Year 2 on the Greenaway shortlist.

 

Since October 2004, I've been touring schools as a visiting writer and teacher, offering days which provide a balance of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing according to the school's desires.

 

Two Types of Day are very popular:

 

Creative Writing Day

 

Pupils use picture prompts, planning sheets and specific prose techniques to create characters, a plot and the opening sections of a story.

 

Drama & Literature Day

 

Pupils explore five or six fiction titles through a mixture of talk, drama and some writing. I have worked extensively on The Doncaster Book Award and on The Carnegie Medal with this type of day. This year I was also involved in the pilot project for The Southwark Book Award, working with Years 6 & 7 in schools in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. This September I began work with schools for The Salford Children's Book Award.

 

Following a day in school, I'll then produce an optional Feedback Pack which includes photos, details of the day and pupils' writing in a report, plus certificates for all the pupils involved.

 

To date I have run workshops in the following authorities: Kirklees, Calderdale, Bradford, Doncaster, Salford, Sheffield, St Helens & Southwark.

 

As a writer, my successes are gradually building. I continue to work on prose fiction aimed at 9-12 year-olds and I also write plays and poetry.  My unpublished children's novel 'The Seven Ages of Jack' was shortlisted for the Fidler Award. My youth play 'Our House' was performed in The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.  My haikus have appeared regularly on the Guardian Online. Some of my poetry has been published in an anthology and a short story of mine is soon to appear in another anthology.

 

As a teacher, I worked for 16 years across five different secondary schools, teaching English, Drama, History and Humanities. I have taught creative writing to groups of writers ranging from Year 6 to Year 13. I have not yet delivered classes to adult audiences, but this is something I would also like to develop.

 

From September 2006 I went full-time with my workshops business. A creative writing  or a reading day can be tailored entirely to your needs, working with several classes during the day or working intensively with one group for the whole day. Weekend workshops are also an option.

 

My fees from September 2007 are:

 

Full Day Workshop    £185

3-hour Workshop      £120

2-hour Workshop      £100

Feedback Pack           £75

 

Extra fees for travel and accommodation are payable when working away from home (Huddersfield). I also add a flat fee of £15 per day for additional expenses when staying in hotels. As I am a qualified teacher, however, the extra cost of supply necessitated by many writers in schools is not an issue.

 

Please Email me in the first instance if you are interested.

 

Further Details

 

Generally I begin all of my workshop days by talking about my own writing and love of books, then reading the group some of my own work and telling them about the book I'm currently reading. From then on, the day takes one of various paths, depending on what the librarian / teacher would like to get from the day.

 

Book Award Days

 

This will typically involve 5 or 6 fiction titles that have been short-listed for a particular award. Each title will be explored during the day by using a Drama activity. Each exploration takes this form:

1. Introduce the book and read an extract from the beginning
2. Ask questions during & after the reading
3. Set a Drama activity on the title - could be a paired script, a group improvisation, a set of freeze-frames to develop, etc
4. Come back together as a group for volunteers to perform to the rest
5. Raise further questions on the book between and after performances

 

During the course of a day like this, I build on their confidence and by the end of the day, I have always achieved my aim of having everyone perform at least once.

 

I have completed days like this for the Doncaster Book Award, The Carnegie Medal, The Kate Greenaway Medal, The Southwark Book Award and The Salford Children's Book Award. I've worked with groups from Y2 up to Y11 and with numbers from 10 up to 50. The ideal number is 25-30. I have also done these as Half-Days focussing on 3 main titles. Neighbouring schools will sometimes gather together their keen readers to form a group or pair up Y7 with Y6 feeders.

 

Themed Fiction Days

 

These workshops follow the pattern above, but instead of working with a short list, we work with a genre of fiction. E.g.:

·      Armthorpe School (Doncaster) - Summer School workshops on Spy books last year and Dragon stories this year

·      A Christmas holiday session on Dickens' Christmas Carol

·      A tie-in day to the launch of the Charlie & the Chocolate Factory film

·      A day working in tandem with author Robert Muchamore to explore and promote his Cherub series

·      Days driven by my choice or the librarian's choice of books to promote

 

Creative Writing Days

 

For these days, I work with 10-20 pupils aiming to develop ideas for prose fiction. The day has a structured pattern and uses picture prompts throughout. I always write with them and after every writing burst, we voluntarily share our work around the table. This is how it runs:

1. A look at the language skills used in the opening of my own unpublished novel 'The Seven Ages of Jack'
2. Warm-up exercise where the pupils write a dialogue based on a picture
3. Pupils write a character profile for a lead character for their story
4. Development of story ideas and crisis point for lead character
5. Development of an opposition character for the story
6. Sustained writing of the opening of our story where the lead character approaches the crisis point
7. Description of place is explored, introducing the technique of funnelling and the character is set into this place in order to reflect on the crisis and move towards action
8. Further development then takes place at the end of the day and the pupils are encouraged to continue their stories independently at home or in school.

 

I have done this kind of day with single year groups, Key Stage 3 groups and with Sixth Formers.

 

Combination Days

 

My specialisms are Creative Writing, Literature and Drama, so I will often combine two or three of the disciplines in the same workshop. For instance, I have run a workshop for North Doncaster Technology College for two summers where their Year 8 Literacy target group does a full week of activities including a visit to The Deep in Hull. I do a day called Into the Deep where we look at 2 seaside-related fiction titles, produce some Drama and also do some creative writing. Recently I did a Boys into Books session involving reluctant readers which combined all three disciplines.

 

Shorter Sessions

 

Full Day workshops give pupils the best chance to enjoy, learn and develop, but I have also delivered 2-hour or 3-hour sessions which have taken many forms. Here are some examples:

 

1. Mini-versions of the days listed above
2. Launch of library book boxes with Years 7, 8 & 9 at North Doncaster Technology College, pulling up volunteers to the stage for Drama presentations
3. A 2-hour book promotion session with 60 Rishworth School Y7 pupils where different groups tackled a Drama task for 12 different titles and then performed their pieces.
4. Hosting the Launch Event and the Final Event for the Doncaster Book Award
5. Contributing workshops alongside poet Levi Tafari for a cluster of schools in St Helens shadowing the Carnegie Medal

 

Sixth Form

 

I have also worked with Years 12 & 13 on syllabus-related days or workshops for personal development:

 

·      Creative Writing Days - workshops to develop ideas and beginnings for Original Writing

·      Enrichment - a series of regular workshops on Novel Writing

·      Writers on the syllabus - exploration of writers such as Emily Dickinson

 

Overall, although many of my workshops follow established patterns, I'm always open to suggestions for new types of day and will always devise something new. For instance, for a Y8 Literacy Summer School for North Doncaster Technology College, I targeted Level 4 pupils with the rigours of speech marks usage in story-writing in order to push them towards Level 5. Transition, Literacy, Boys Into Books & Gifted & Talented are all target areas I have addressed in different ways.

 

 

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