Macbeth Creative Writing Workshop Week 1: Bard Banter Text: Macbeth, adapted by Leon Garfield. With the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death this weekend, I have taken the opportunity to introduce a little bit of bard banter into my creative workshops. Starting a writing and drama project on any of Shakespeare's plays can be a daunting task, but helping the children get to grips with some cutting Shakespearean language is a great place to start. It goes without saying that getting the chance to insult the teacher with some saucy, impish quips certainly helps loosen up the shy performers! Using the fabulous Shakespeare Insult Kit as a starting point, the children were quick to get to stuck into a little Elizabethan trash-talking. Here are some zingers: Wipe thy ugly face thou fishified, fat-kidneyed ratsbane!     Hark! Thou logger headed, earth-vexing hugger mugger! Lead apes in hell thou toad-faced, gorbellied flaxwench! Hark! Wipe thy ugly face thou goatish

The Great Wave - Creative writing workshop, Year 6 Week 1: Vocabulary development Inspired by Japanese artist Hokusai's masterpiece The Great Wave , Year 6 are starting on a creative voyage to bring the iconic print to literary life! We spent some time poring over the features of painting: the spray, the wave, the boats and, well hidden, Mount Fuji. After reading an account of Ellen MacArthur's sailing voyages, we began to generate some cutting edge vocabulary to give our writing some sparkle. This was the process: Children labelled the features of the picture, including parts of the wave (crest, barrel, swell, lip) We chose personified verbs for the different features. 'Grabbing', 'scratching' and 'grasping' for the finger-like lip of the wave; 'screaming', 'slapping' and 'whistling' for the wind. The group selected similes for each of the features. The wind became 'a bellowing dragon', the boats w