For Primary school students
We get kids excited about writing. Our programs are designed to spark students’ imaginations and channel their energy and enthusiasm into the writing process. We share, we talk, we laugh and we write.
All Story Factory programs align closely with the syllabus to support teachers achieving their goals.
We work with schools in many ways:
- One-off workshops: bring a class to visit us for a two-hour blast of creative writing inspiration at our beautifully-designed creative writing centres in Redfern or Parramatta.
- Term Programs: book us to come to your school. We can work with you to deliver a writing program once a week for a term, or multiple terms.
- Residency Programs: once you’ve tried the above, apply to become a Story Factory Residency School. We’ll commit to working with your students for at least a year, working with multiple classes, to create a culture of writing throughout the school.
All programs, whether they run for two hours or a term, end with the publication of students’ writing in a handsomely bound book which they can take home to share with their family and community.
Enquire for a free writing workshop series via: info@storyfactory.org.au
Term-long workshops
So you want to be a…
- Stage 1
- Term 4 (term-long)
- In person
Students use their persuasive and figurative language skill set to convince a skeptical owl that they themselves would truly make a superb owl. Over eight workshops, students engage in orthographic-focused inventive spelling activities and create a series of short persuasive pieces that convince the reader they can be an owl.
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Gidjirrigaa!
- Stage 2
- Term 4 (term-long)
- In person
In this modular workshop series students will explore the surprising and fascinating lives of budgerigars. They will devise their own budgerigar characters and create crafted portraits of these popular pets. Activities will include creating short poems, narratives and informative writing about the tricks and quirks of budgerigars that will feature students’ use of vocabulary from Aboriginal languages. This workshop will use extracts from a range of contemporary picture books to inspire and model student writing.
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Freedom Machines
- Stage 3
- Term 4 (term-long)
- In person
What is freedom to you? It means different things to different people at different times. What if you could build your very own freedom machine: what would it look like, where would it take you? In this term-long workshop students will explore Kirli Saunders and Matt Ottley’s beautiful picture The Incredible Freedom Machines. Students will write about what freedom means to them, design and describe their own freedom machine, and write about the exotic and magical locations they would go to in their freedom machines. Students will compose short texts and free verse poetry.
ENQUIRE NOWThe students find it difficult to find their voice in this world but the workshop allowed them a safe and free space to express themselves. They just soared.
Teacher
Sydney Secondary College
For High school students
Our experienced storytellers use research-informed approaches to promote discussion, engagement and motivation to write for all our high school students. We offer a range of programs, from year-long projects with extremely reluctant writers to shorter programs with motivated writers looking for opportunities to hone their craft and get their voice out into the world.
Term-long workshops
Let’s Get Crafty
- Stage 4
- Term 4 (term-long)
- In person
In this workshop, students will create short pieces of writing that will include micro poems and microfiction that explore their personal views or experiences. They will have the opportunity to get crafty and transform these fragments of writing into multimodal texts. This workshop is ideal for rewarding and re-energising students as they reach the end of the school year.
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Olfactory
- Stage 5
- Term 4 (term-long)
- In person
“Smells like teen writing…”
In this workshop series students will learn about features of discursive writing and create a series of short responses or segments that will accumulate to become a personal essay about the olfactory world. From surveying their peers as to what is the most pukeworthy smell to developing their very own “personality perfume” students will reflect on and share their personal connections to the world of smells, odours and fragrances. Lynx Africa, anyone? Student will learn about and employ such features as anecdotes, figurative language, factoids, allusion and anaphora.
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Magic Realism
- Stage 5
- Term 4 (term-long)
- In person
Imagine a world where people experience the emergence of strange and wondrous sights, sounds and fragrances from their smartphones. In this series, students will learn about and write in the genre of magic realism. They will explore diverse visual and written texts from a range of cultures and apply a range of drafting and editing strategies as they craft their own magic realism short story.
ENQUIRE NOWOne-off workshops
Prose Poetry
- Stage 5
- Term 4 (One off)
- In person
Have you ever had a nightmare you can’t quite explain? In this workshop students explore prose poetry and surrealism as they prepare to write their own short horror narrative based on an alien invasion. They learn strategies for ideating and world building, and are exposed to models of writing that are fluid in form and rich in ideas and language features. Ideal for reluctant writers. Students write a prose poem in the surreal genre that describes the experience of an alien invasion or encounter. They engage in world building and focus on evoking a sense of place and an emotional response to a dream-like or nightmarish event.
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InstaPoetry
- Stage 5
- Term 4 (One off)
- In person
So, as you may or may have not noticed, InstaPoetry is pretty big! This workshop introduces students to this rich and exploding new genre, explores the interesting ways its multimodal nature is being used inventively by contemporary poets, and leads students through a collection of engaging activities using different examples, structures, and scaffolds. Our InstaPoetry workshop provides safe and engaging experiences for developing student voice and self expression as they develop their grasp of poetic forms and stylistic features.
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