On Thursday, Coomera Rivers managed to secure a visit from Matt Stanton who is the author and illustrator of the very popular 'How to be a funny kid' series. All students were treated to an entertaining and hilarious session where Matt's main aims are to engage reluctant readers and inspire students to write. Each session was tailor-made for the age of the audience and we've never heard so much laughter emanate from the hall.

Here's a summary of his sessions:

For Prep to 2

Matt ran a session which encouraged students to realise that their imagination is fun. Matt says, "In this session we imagine our imagination. We use it together to create a funny character that no one has ever seen before in the history of the world (drawn on a whiteboard). We read picture books from the Books That Drive Kids Crazy series and the kids leave encouraged that they all have an imagination and that it's fun and funny to use."

For Year 3 and 4

These sessions are focused more around the Funny Kid series and how to write funny stories. Matt explains, "We talk about how jokes are short stories and how to make stories. We focus on narrative structure, original and funny characters and whole host of creative tools they can use in their own storytelling. We also talk about how to navigate 'getting stuck' and how drawing a story first can be a great way of engaging your creativity in a different way when writing gets difficult.

For Year 5 and 6

Senior students did a similar thing to the Year 3 and 4s but with a slightly older focus. Matt explains, "We look at how we are all creative and you can use your creativity to create whatever path in life that you want. Again, it's built around the Funny Kid series and Matt shows them how techniques he shows them are evidenced within the book. It's has a bit more of a behind-the-scenes look at my practice and career on top of the toolbox nature for Grades 3-4.

What the students thought

We asked the students what they thought and here's just some of their feedback:

Prep A students:
Kayla - I loved it when Matt read us his funny story.
Chorus - The two books he read to us made me laugh so hard.
Baylin - My favourite part was when he drew the characters tummy as a basketball.

Prep K
It was about funny books.
He read us funny stories
We used our imagination to create a new character we haven't seen.
He taught us how to stretch out our imagination.

1C was inspired by Matt Stanton and created their own characters! We then created our own story plots and wrote our first stories about our characters.

2C students:
Lana: He was funny and really creative. He puts in a lot of effort in his day to write his books.
Addison: I like Matt’s books because they are very funny and make me laugh.

2J students:
Matt was very funny. We loved how he taught us how to stretch our imagination and draw a unique character.

4C students::
It was amazing, fantastic and spectacular!
Hysterical!
I would rate it one of the greatest experiences!
The most amazing, the most fantastic, the most great, the most wonderful, the most lovely thing in the world!
Adventurous!
Just outright the most amazing!!!
Interesting!

5M students::
It was funny how he talked about his kids.
It was inspiring.
His shortcuts for writing and tips were excellent.
I want to read all of his books.
It was cool how he signed our books.
It helped with drawing pictures.

We hope your child came home from school truly inspired by Matt and eager to tell you all about his work and stories.  Our school iCentre now has plenty of these books for students to borrow and we're sure they are going to be hot property!