Literature fest season strikes!

Grades 6-9 spent Saturday 20^th January – the last Saturday School of this academic year – getting acquainted with different forms of storytelling and poetry, and taking part in creative writing workshops. Divided into three stations, different classes were taken through mother tongue storytelling competitions and poetry contests.

“We learnt what anagrams and tongue twisters were, and how to write limericks and acrostic poems,” said grade 7 student Aashna Lakhani. “Everyone came up with amazing limericks in our class. And then we had a great amount of fun writing our own acrostic poems. But the activity I liked best was called ‘spin a yarn’. One person had to start a story and the next person had to continue the story, at the end we would get to know the story that we had created. In the first round our story did not really have a plot as all of us weren’t listening to each other. Then we decided to listen to each other for the second round. The second round turned out to be much better than the first one!”

In anticipation of the post-lunch lull, the English department decided to conduct a creative writing workshop for the students of grade 9. Each student was asked to write out a setting, character, and scenario on individual chits for a potential story. The chits were then collected under each category and students were asked to come up, pick one from each, and read out their trio to the rest of the group. The activity induced a lot of laughter and soon, students were ready to get started on their (mostly ludicrous) short stories. After 20 minutes of fervent writing, a few volunteers got up and shared their stories with the class. The activity extended over time and both students and teachers alike were impressed by the fantastical plotlines and imaginations of their peers. 

“Creative writing builds on both creative and critical components of the ATL thinking skill,” remarked Himani Sood, English faculty. “Not only must students be unafraid to push the boundaries of their imaginations, they must also exercise their ability to make logical connections to seemingly incongruous parts.”