Senior Writing Workshops with Geoff Goodfellow

Goodfellow back again! 

During Week 9, my Year 12 English Literary Studies class was fortunate to again experience the presence of acclaimed Adelaide-based poet, Geoff Goodfellow. On this occasion, our students spent several blocks of time throughout the week working one-on-one with Geoff, workshopping their individual creative writing pieces. They each drafted, edited and polished a transformation of one of Geoff’s poems into their own masterpiece, demonstrating their ability to transfer various ideas and themes into a new text type. 

Flinders University are currently making a documentary on Geoff Goodfellow’s work within schools. Three members of their Media Unit were on site for two days, filming Geoff’s workshops with our students.

My class have greatly enjoyed engaging with Geoff’s poetry, which explores the diverse and relevant subject matter of relationships, love, drug addiction, family dynamics, loss and grief and the unknown future.

These individual workshops were undertaken in an initiative to help improve the achievement outcomes for our most dedicated writers. Student feedback from the sessions was overwhelmingly positive:

• “Geoff Goodfellow has helped me vary my language and understand the characters I’m trying to portray in my diary. It has been awesome to have his help with transforming his texts as we are provided with firsthand knowledge of them.” ~ Ned Moxey
• “Geoff has helped me create a text that is unique and personal to me. He also helped me incorporate colloquial language into my work for a persuasive effect.” ~ Ursula Clarke
• “Geoff Goodfellow has been influential and beneficial in bettering my work. I feel so happy about my work after receiving help and guidance from him. Also, a particularly good thing about his approach to helping students is that he hasn’t changed my words to his, he has just suggested points that could be addressed.” ~ Darcee Azzopardi
• “Geoff Goodfellow assisted me to structure a poem effectively, as well as learning how to implement conversational writing and colloquial language for effect.” ~ Ellie Spithas 

~ Ms Holly Dufek (Senior Leader: English/HASS/Languages)