News Articles at St Nicholas of Myra Primary School Penrith

2019 Stage 2 Westwords Presentation

16 Dec 2019

Stage 2 Westwords Writing Project

During Term 4, Stage 2 students and their teachers from St Nicholas of Myra, Penrith were honoured to participate in the author-in-residence partnership with WestWords. The students were beyond excited to have Jodie McLeod come in and work with them sharing her stories and experiences as a professionally published author. The students and teachers were struck by her talents as she shared her story, Leonard the Lyrebird.

Over the weeks, the students writing continued to develop and we as the teachers could see them beginning to beam with confidence. We saw our already talented students begin to believe in the power of their own writing and really believe in the magic of their own words.

Jodie guided the students to come to know and understand that writing is meant to be fun and imaginative, creative, and experimental. She emphasised the importance of first, learning the rules of writing and then you can break them, and transform them to power your own ideas. She has a wonderful ability to turn a simple sentence or idea about a mundane task into the most fascinating stories. Jodie worked with the students to explore the avenue of showing and not telling and helping students select words with power and purpose. Jodie created a platform for students to share their memories and take their readers on an emotional journey.

We were also honoured to work with Eloise Short, the incredibly talented professional illustrator of Leonard the Lyrebird. Eloise presented students with different views on how to approach colours and patterns within nature and challenged them to break some of these norms. Eloise encouraged students not to be constricted by the real colour of things, imagining if the trees were pink, how would this change the story. Students were able to develop and transfer skills from week to week to refine the process and be challenged by space, colour, and line work. Their artworks were decorative and interesting and enhanced the stories they had been working on.

The experience was incredible for both teachers and students as we were able to see the passion of students come alive, through the emotional journey of their characters and vibrancy of their final artwork included in this book.
Miss Margaret Dobrucki: Leader of Learning, St Nicholas of Myra Public School

We invite you to view our book by following the link https://www.westwords.com.au/projects/an-ordinary-day/

Written By

St Nicholas of Myra Primary School Penrith
www.stnicholaspenrith.catholic.edu.au

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ANZAC Day Service St Nicholas of Myra will hold a whole school service for ANZAC Day on Tuesday 30th April. The commemoration will begin at 10:45am and will be led by the FIAT and SRC.