Thoughts and Reflections: Writing Made Easy

Hey everyone! A lot has happened since I last posted here and I am strongly feeling the need to post about it now. After returning from our trip to Turkey, I along with my siblings, Zainab and Ibraheem, made a documentary on homeschooling, about which I had mentioned in a previous post. It is a quite detailed video in which we've answered some frequently asked questions regarding homeschooling, as well as talked about many of our experiences. The complete video is approximately fifteen minutes long and is called 'The Story of Three Homeschoolers'. Unfortunately, we haven't uploaded the video anywhere online yet D: but if we do, I'll be sure to post it here as well.

But the thing I wanted to share about right now is my own thoughts and reflections on a workshop I recently conducted called 'Writing Made Easy'. This was a three-day workshop that I did at ERDC for children aged nine to thirteen. This was the third workshop that I conducted at ERDC -  I had done one on blogging called 'Every Child Can Blog' and another one on 'Mind Games' a few years ago. However, this workshop was much different from the previous ones. For one thing, it was three days long (2.5 hours/day), while the previous ones were of just one day each.

We announced the workshop around two weeks before the workshop day, which meant that I did not have a lot of time for it's preparation. However, I took a brief break from my studies and invested a lot of time in it's planning and preparation. I worked on an activity booklet for all the participants of the workshop, in which I included a number of writing activities and prompts in English as well as Urdu. Apart from that, I wrote some tips and ideas for writing, stories of successful writers, and some inspirational quotes. After several drafts, feedback from family members and a lot of input from my father, the final draft of the booklet was ready. It was forty eight pages long.

We got the booklet printed in a notebook style, with a proper cover designed on the theme of the workshop flyer. It looked so beautiful and professional when it came after being printed, that I felt that all the hard work was definitely worth it. We even considered printing extra copies for gifting it to friends and family members, to encourage their children to write.

Apart from the booklet, I also wrote a letter for the parents of all the participants of the workshop. In that letter, which I wrote originally in English, then translated into Urdu as well, I informed parents about the idea and format of the workshop, and what it aimed to achieve. I explained how children would be motivated and eager to write if they were not forced into doing it. I'm sharing both versions (English and Urdu) of the letter here as well for all of you.

The workshop was planned to be held on January 2, 4 and 7, 2019, and it went according to schedule, alhumdulillah. We planned it for the afternoon so that school going children could attend as well. The workshop was held from 3:30 pm to 6:00 pm for all days, at ERDC Head Office.

One of the main activities of this workshop was free writing. This activity consists of around 7 to 10 minutes, in which all participants are expected to write. However, there are no rules or instructions regarding the writing that they are to do. The participants could write in any language that they feel comfortable in, on the topic of their choice. Furthermore, their writings would not have to be submitted, checked or assessed.

The purpose of this activity was to give participants the freedom to write whatever they wish to, and to allow them to experience the liberation that comes with writing. Since kids typically write only at school, or for their schoolwork, they usually have no idea how fun and interesting writing can actually be if they write for themselves. After around 8 minutes of writing, in which everyone (including me  - or the workshop leader) writes, there is the opportunity for the writers to share their work. Of course it wasn't compulsory for them to share, but it was encouraged and appreciated if they did.

I noticed how, in the beginning when I introduced this activity, the kids were no less than shocked. After many confused questions like 'But... what are we supposed to write?', 'What's the topic?', and 'Do we have to write in English?', they picked up their pens and pencils, uncertain and nervous. But they soon grew confident as they realized that I didn't care about what they wrote. I only wanted them to write. Initially unsure and even scared, they were  soon writing fluently. Later on when we did this activity again, they even requested to increase the duration for writing, which I did. I was delighted to see that there was no uniformity in the children's writings; everyone was writing different things that they felt like. From imaginative stories to real life incidents and reflections, there was a huge diversity in the creative work they produced.

Apart from free writing, which we did in all three days, there were a few other activities as well. Participants did some activities from the booklet, there was a group activity, a written story circle, as well as a letter writing activity. Although some kids liked some activities more than others, all of the activities were generally well-received by the audience.

I think this experience went quite well, alhumdulillah, and much better than my expectations. I do plan and intend to conduct more such workshops and events in the future as well, inshaAllah. I just hope that the kids who started writing, or became more interested in it, as a result of this workshop, will continue to write long after its end.

Thanks for reading! :)

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Happy New Year everyone! Although I don't really make new year resolutions regularly anymore, I do resolve to post more regularly here. Hope you'll stick with me. :D Thanks!