School Programs
Develop your students as confident and creative individuals through our imaginative literacy workshops and programs. Our arts-based teaching and learning approach helps students build confidence and take creative risks, and helps teachers promote student agency and wellbeing.
To learn more or to book a workshop please fill out the enquiry form here:
Choose Your Own Adventure
Age range: Year 5-9
Duration: 2hrs
Ever wondered what would happen if a character in a book went through a different door? Using branching storylines, students write a Choose Your Own Adventure story with one beginning and four endings!
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Educational outcomes: Students explore their story through many parallel possibilities and make creative decisions. Students focus on the reader-author relationship and learn how to use dramatic tension to create a great reader experience.
Supports: ACELT1612 and ACELT1798 (Year 5) / ACELT1618 and ACELT1800 (Year 6) / ACELT1805 (Year 7) / ACELT1638 (Year 9) of the ACARA curriculum.
What students walk away with: At least one story path plotted out and a planning sheet full of ideas for the rest of the story.
Add-on half-hour PL: Unpack the benefits of 'Stodgy Starts' and branching narratives, as well as using student's work to inspire follow-up written works.
A Perilous Quest
Age range: Year 5-9, but can be adapted for Year 3-4.
Duration: 2hrs
You’re about to set off on a quest – a journey fraught with obstacles and just a little bit of danger. Don’t worry though, all our heroes embark on their quests with a Hero’s Backpack, filled with objects that may prove useful in a tricky spot. Students will create a map of a strange land, profile their hero and their nemesis, fill the Hero’s Backpack, then set off on an adventure story!
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Outcomes: Students learn about the hero’s journey structure with a focus on character motivation and designing obstacles for the main character to face and overcome.
Supports: ACELT1612 and ACELT1798 (Year 5) / ACELT1618 and ACELT1800 (Year 6) / ACELT1638 (Year 9) of the ACARA curriculum.
Students leave with: All the elements of a hero’s journey narrative recorded in a comic book format. This can stand alone or be developed into a detailed written work.
Add on half-hour PL: Unpack 'McGuffins', obstacles and solutions, as well as using student's work to inspire follow-up written works.
Comic BOOM!
Age range: Year 3-6, can be adapted for high school students
Duration: 2hrs
Remember a time when you set out to do something ‘good’ but it didn’t turn out as you planned? Students mine their own life for story starters, and turn them into exciting comics through the use of literary embellishments, story pacing and narrative arcs.
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Outcomes: Students learn how to use a story arc to plan and structure an autobiographical narrative with an emphasis on dramatic tension.
Supports: ACELT1601 (Year 3) / ACELT1605 and ACELT 1607 (Year 4) / ACELT1612 (Year 5) / ACELT1618 (Year 6) of the ACARA curriculum.
Students leave with: A comic book of their autobiographical narrative, which can be continued in class time or used as a plan to turn it into a written piece of work.
Add-on half-hour PL: Unpack story arcs and tension, as well as using student's work to inspire follow-up written works.
Space Write
Age range: Year 3-6
Duration: 2hrs
We’ve received strange signals from space and need brave astronauts like you to help us plan a mission to the stars! Design your own spacecraft, scan the surface of an alien planet, and make a short comic book plan for exploring this strange world.
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Outcomes: Visual storytelling and idea generation with a focus on plot building and problem solving within stories.
Supports: ACELT1601 (Year 3) / ACELT1605 and ACELT 1607 (Year 4) / ACELT1612 (Year 5) / ACELT1618 (Year 6) of the ACARA curriculum.
Students leave with: A comic booklet with a main character, a unique space vehicle, a setting and narrative plan that can be turned into a written piece.
Add-on half-hour PL: Unpack world-building and external conflict, as well as using student's work to inspire follow-up written works.
100 Stories Down
Age range: Year 1-4
Duration: 1.5 hrs
We need your help to find out what lies 99 levels below our mysterious trapdoor! Use your illustration and imagination skills to create settings and ideas to propel your creative writing 100 stories down. In this workshop, you will search for clues, design characters, create their home and make a list of ‘dos and don’ts’ (to help anyone who encounters them).
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Outcomes: Students learn how to create interesting, multifaceted characters and design worlds around them.
Supports: ACELY1671 (Year 2), ACELT1601 (Year 3) / ACELT1605 and ACELT 1607 (Year 4) of the ACARA curriculum.
Students leave with: Pictures of their creatures, the setting where they live and some rules to keep everyone safe.
Add-on half-hour PL: Unpack the benefits of visual world-building and how breaking the rules can make for a great story, as well as using student's work to inspire follow-up written works.
My Place: Instapoetry
Age range: Year 7-12
Duration: 70mins
Poetry for the gram! Introduce students to the world of Instapoetry, a short form poetry workshop inspiring creativity and self-reflection in an accessible way. This workshop is perfect for senior school students to experiment with text and images utilising popular social media platforms to create meaningful and creative poetry content.
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Educational outcomes: Students understand how the selection of language features can be used for particular purpose and effects. Students learn to experiment with combining language and visuals to create new texts and meaning.
Supports: ACELT1805 (Year 7) / ACELT1638 (Year 9) / ACEEN013 (Unit 1) in the ACARA curriculum.
What students walk away with: Students will generate three different texts from writing activities to inspire and encourage them to create 1-2 final, self-reflective Insta poems.
Weaving the Moon: Poetry Workshop
Age range: Year 3-6
Duration: 90 minutes
The night can be dark, mysterious and cold - but also full of beauty and calm! We take students on an imaginative sensory adventure, and help them to create poetry from their own memories of nighttime.
Taking inspiration from the significant symbolism of the moon and of nighttime, students are guided to create a word-bank of emotional and sensory words which are then shaped to form drawings and poems based on personal and collective experiences.
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Educational outcomes: This poetry workshop draws connections between personal experiences and the worlds of text, poetry and language, and shared responses with others.
Supports: ACELT1791 and ACELT1596 (Year 3) / ACELT1603 and ACELA1488 (Year 4) / ACELT1611 (Year 5) / ACELT1800 (Year 6)
What students walk away with: A drawing and short poem they have made of a nighttime memory, rich with details.
A word-bank of ideas about emotions, sounds, sights, smells and other memories inspired by the night and a large-format line from their poem which can be shared.
Experience of creative visualisation and an associated moment of calm
An understanding of how some experiences can be communal and/or universal, through the exploration of the group’s memories of the night.
Craft Of The Draft
Age range: Year 5-6
Duration: 2hrs
Writing a story is hard. To read, review and improve it is harder, even for grown-ups! Thanks to our Early Harvest program, we specialise in making editing fun and achievable to students. Using an engaging framework, students identify what they want to convey in the different parts of their story, and add and remove story elements to achieve that effect.
*Recommended as a perfect follow-on to one of the above workshops. It can also improve any other stories you may be writing in class.
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Educational outcomes: Students learn what makes a good story and how to evaluate their work in an engaging way.
Supports: ACELT1612 and ACELT1798 (Year 5) / ACELT1618 and ACELT1800 (Year 6) / ACELT1805 (Year 7) / ACELT1638 (Year 9) of the ACARA curriculum.
What students walk away with: Students bring one written story to the workshop. They leave with a framework and all the tools to edit it.
Add-on half-hour PL: Unpack tackling audience and audience experience. Discuss follow-up activities to encourage further collaborative peer editing.
What schools & teachers say
Workshop Details
Our workshops are;
For Primary and Secondary Students
ACARA aligned
Support Learning Areas and Capabilities of English, Literacy, and Critical & Creative Thinking.
30- or 60-minute Teacher Professional Learning sessions available for all workshops, to build on the experience
Workshop delivery can be flexible to suit your school needs and schedule
Workshops can be held in the magical world of the 100 Story Building in Footscray as an excursion giving you exclusive access to the 100 Story Building space, where we create a fun and safe environment.
Workshops can be delivered in your school as an adventure-packed incursion with our expert facilitators coming to you.
Or presented online to support schools and teachers to deliver creative and engaging writing lessons to students learning remotely.
We can accomodate one class per workshop.
All prices exclude GST.
* Discounts available for schools with an ICSEA score of 1000 or less.
^ For 1 facilitator. Add $50 for each additional facilitator.
100 Story Building follows COVID-safe rules and is committed to the protection of children and young people. Read our child safety rules and policy.