Gifted and Talented Workshops

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Reception, KS1, K2 & Year 7


Anne Stairmand is a children’s writer with six books out to date ranging from 3-11 years, all very funny, satirical, with crazy plots and with utterly hilarious names. She lives on the Essex Suffolk border with her husband and has a grown-up family.

Anne uses her vast expertise in education to ensure pupils from 3-12 not only have fun in her workshops but are challenged, inspired and introduced to new ideas and writing processes. She is always keen to ensure the key skills and elements of stages in the curriculum are covered too- to keep teachers happy!

Non-Fiction

Anne can take a theme, story, or current news item, then explore it with pupils. This is done with non-fiction genres, and she explains how structures, skills, tenses, vocabulary, and readership, impact on the outcome of the text. Invariably, even in non-fiction writing, pupils wear props to relax and enjoy the day.

Editing and peer assessment rate highly in Anne’s workshops, so all pupils enhance these skills in pairs, groups and as a whole group, enjoying their accomplishments with others. Reading work out loud and creating a range of expression for the texts, always causes great fun and excitement.

Anne always likes pupils to reflect on the new skills they have acquired, or share how these have been developed to suit the particular genre and readership.

Fiction and Play Writing

Whilst Anne’s stories tend to be highly amusing, this does not have to be the case for creative writing and playwriting. Anne explores the different genres in writing with a range of examples to start a piece, often modeling ideas with pupils.

She always, without exception uses inspirational and challenging vocabulary sheets, allowing pupils to explore new frontiers with their writing, often pausing to listen and share views and thoughts on the skills used. She encourages pupils to write where they like (within reason), to create a stimulus and element to the workshop. It goes without saying, that, pupils are expected to wear props such as wigs when writing!

Anne also works with pupils to create play scripts from ideas and stories, developing the succinctness of direction, moving a plot on and engaging an audience with speech. In creative writing and playwriting, she spends a lot of time enabling pupils to understand the impact and context of speech, in particular, colloquial language and how best to use it.

All pupils act or read out their work, and again, use peer assessment and editing to improve their writing. In nearly all cases, after a fabulous workshop, the group like to share their amazing and spectacular work with the rest of their key stage, or even the school!

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For Gifted and Talented Workshops contact: Authors Abroad keeley@caboodlebooks.co.uk