Philosopher, lecturer and intellectual … just some of the things Matt Porter definitely is not! He is however, an author of hilarious children’s books and a primary school teacher. As a primary school student in the south-west of Victoria, Matt loved sport and writing. Trying to combine the two lead to messy writing and several collisions so he put his publishing ambitions on hold until he received his pen licence and could spell tricky words like ‘unconscious’. Matt’s first books, My Country and Picture Perfect, were published in 2010. He has since published stories in Challenge magazine, an article in Runners’ World, several teacher resource/student activity books and two books in his Crazy Relief Teachers series.
Matt is passionate about sharing writing tips and activities with students, teachers and adults. You won’t just hear him talking about himself during school visits, Matt wants to be a positive role model to show writing can be enjoyed by everyone. He uses his teaching experience to relate to students and employs strategies to allow all students to write a piece they’ll be extremely proud of. Matt is keen to visit any school interested in him taking a:
- writing workshop
- author talk
- grade/class/year for a writing lesson
- group of talented writers from various grade levels
- professional development session for teacher and parents
- Book Week activity
- book reading
-
anything else book or writing related!
As a writer learning the craft (after his career as an intellectual somehow failed), Matt received help from many generous writers. He enjoys helping others in the same position and enthusiastically gives tips on further improving writing and achieving publication.
Matt’s natural tendency to look at the funny side and to always ask ‘what if?’ comes out in his lifestyle and writing. He’s travelled the Nullarbor to play golf on the world’s longest course and plans to attend a day of stunt school in Queensland. Matt is thorough and meticulous when researching his books. He selflessly hurled dodgeballs at unsuspecting students when writing Mr Sergeant and the Dodgeballs of Doom and plans to win millions while preparing for his next gameshow host-inspired title in the Crazy Relief Teacher series.
Matt plans to write many more entertaining children’s books. He also intends to write for adults, however children’s writing will always be his number one passion. Matt relishes his time spent on writing, whether it is writing his own books, visiting schools, festivals or writing groups and hopes to dedicate even more time to his passion in the future.
Stephanie Chiocci and the Cooper's Hill Cheese Chase
Stephanie Chiocci and the Cooper's Hill Cheese Chase is a hilarious adventure featuring the mighty Collingwood AFLW captain Stephanie Chiocci. Stephanie must call upon her elite football abilities to save a family's cheese-making business by taking on a local bully in the world-famous Gloucester Cheese-Rolling Race.
The Greatest Book in the World
A laugh-out loud read where the narrator speaks directly to readers while attempting to create The Greatest Book in the World! Rudolf Wordsmith requests that readers finish his rhyming couplets and admonishes them when they’re tricked into supplying a ‘rude’ rhyme. This trickery is achieved through clever text and the lively illustrations created by Dave Atze. As the readers’ ‘rude’ rhymes cause the illustrator to draw Rudolf in humiliating predicaments he becomes increasingly frustrated. This culminates in a surprising and hilarious ending that will have children howling with laughter.
Matt is passionate about teaching writing and sharing his skills. He uses his 12 years of teaching experience to ensure every session is planned in detail, engaging for students and teaches skills that can make an immediate difference to students' writing.
Ms Law and the Corn-fusing Case of the Broken Window
Oh no! A student has dressed up as a teacher, marched into their classroom and made their classmates complete their homework. The session begins with a student being accused of impersonating a teacher, charged and sent to trial. The session revolves around preparing the court case.
Students will learn how to:
- Write detailed descriptions by describing the evidence
- Write character descriptions, using 'show, don't tell', by describing the accused in teachers' clothes
- Create an action-packed eye-witness account
- Re-write the yard duty teacher's account of the incident by replacing dull words with exciting ones
- Develop interesting characters by creating positive and negative references for the accused
- Use word lists to describe body parts and to use these when writing descriptions
The session finishes with students dressing up and becoming members of the court as the trial is played out. The trial also gives all students the opportunity to share their writing from the session.
This session runs for one hour and is best suited to Year 3 - 6 students
Mr Jackpot and the Stash of Cash
Come on down! One lucky student is selected to don a golden jacket and perform the role of Mr or Mrs Jackpot for the session. The student host displays their gameshow moves while a voiceover plays and recreates a gameshow entrance to theme music. Co-hosting the session with Matt is the student's next role as the rest of the group play a variety of entertaining and educational gameshows.
Students will learn how to:
- Write interesting character openings that reveal personality
- Identify examples of 'show, don't tell' after playing Who Wants to be a Millionaire
- Use 'show, don't tell' to show a character's emotion
- Identify dull words and choose the more interesting replacements through The Word Is Right
- Write similes after watching a classmate play A Minute to Win It
This session runs for one hour and is best suited to Year 3 - 6 students
Developing a Narrative
Want to teach your students the elements of a narrative and how to plan their own stories? Well, this is the session for you! Students act out the main events of Mr Sergeant and the Dodgeballs of Doom and then identify the setting, characters, problem, action to solve the problem, ending and theme. Together the class are then presented with the task of planning a narrative, with the help of Matt. The narrative is set in the students' school and the problem? The Mischief Man has sprung characters to life from books in the school library. With the help of their main character (a student dressed as a superhero) the group plan what mischief the characters will cause and how to finish the narrative and defeat the Mischief Man.
Students will learn how to:
- Identify the elements of a narrative
- Learn that all stories have a setting
- Choose words to describe the qualities of a main character
- Invent interesting problems for narratives
- Brainstorm solutions for a problem in a narrative
- Name a story
This session runs for one hour and is best suited to Prep - Year 6 students
Creating Captivating Characters
Students don't want to simply hear about inventing interesting characters, they want to see their peers dress up and be the characters! This session takes students through the creative process of creating a captivating character. Each step is demonstrated by a student dressing up as one of Matt's Crazy Relief Teachers.
Students will learn how to:
- Create a character profile from Ms Law
- Develop a 'deep' character with personality from Mr Sergeant
- Write individual dialogue for characters from Mr Crikey
- Describe character movement and use body language to show emotion from Mr Jackpot
Students will then be given an overview of creating captivating characters and then placing that character into the perfect plot.
This session can run from 1 to 1 ½ hours and is best suited to Year 3 - 8 students
Advanced Author Skills
A writing workshop that teaches advanced writing skills to students. Students will be taught the steps to create a captivating character and then develop a plot. The session also covers many writing skills used by authors. The workshop allows time for students to practise each skill in fun and engaging activities. When the session finishes each student will have a well-developed character and the plot for a narrative.
Students will learn how to:
- Identify what makes a narrative interesting
- Generate story ideas
- Test the interest level of a narrative before writing
- Create a captivating character and describe them using 'show, don't tell'
- Get to know their character and how they would react in different situations
- Write individual dialogue for their character
- Develop a list of mannerisms for their character
- Understand how to convey emotion and personality through symbolism such as belongings
- Form mental images in readers' minds and use the senses
- Cut the word count without cutting the action
This session can run from 1 - 2 hours and is best suited to Year 7 - 10 students or extension writing groups at primary schools
Staff Professional Development
Matt will take your staff through a variety of fun and interactive ways to teach writing. He will demonstrate skills that are easily taught and can make an immediate difference to your students' writing. Sessions can be tailored to suit your staff's needs or can cover a wide range of topics such as dialogue, creating captivating characters, planning a narrative, engaging reluctant writers and many other areas.
A Tailored Session
Matt loves making new activities to teach skills. Let him know what you want taught and he's happy to develop a session tailored to your students' needs.
Testimonials
Matt Porter presented an engaging and entertaining writers workshop for my Grade five and six students at Bannockburn Primary School. He gave the students some excellent strategies for extending their creative writing, building character profiles and writing with greater expression. His Interactive Whiteboard presentation was very professional and gave students a humorous glimpse of Matt's writing process.
Matt Porter - Bannockburn PS - 2016Matt's passion for writing and teaching was evident in his entertaining and informative session. The students were enthralled and totally engaged during the entire session which catered to all abilities. His activities and tips achieved immediate results and the kids were soon writing far more descriptive and exciting stories. I highly recommend the sessions.
Matt Porter - Bannockburn PS - 2016Thank you Matt for a wonderful author visit – your informative, engaging and entertaining presentation was a Book Week Highlight for our students. They will be looking forward to future Crazy Relief Teacher instalments.
Matt Porter - Our Lady of Mt Carmel School, Coorparoo - 2016Thanks for last night’s Professional Development. It was the best writing PD I’ve ever been to! Beforehand I was thinking I would go lots of writing programs before I taught an older grade, but your PD was very comprehensive.
Matt Porter - Merrivale Primary School - 2016On behalf of all of the staff at Sacred Heart School and the students who were in attendance yesterday, we would like to say a big thank you for your very engaging and interactive workshops. They were absolutely fantastic. The students are raving about you and are already drafting and re-drafting their writing pieces. There was a real buzz at our school during and after your session. We look forward to reading more of your work and practising the writing skills you taught us.
Matt Porter - Sacred Heart Fitzroy PS - 2016
The Greatest Book in the World
Stephanie Chiocci and the Cooper's Hill Cheese Chase
Mr Sergeant and the Dodgeballs of Doom
My Country
Picture Perfect
Ms Law & the Corn-fusing Case of the Broken Window
Mr Jackpot and the Stash of Cash
Mr Crikey and the Greedy Grifith
Featured Speakers
Stop Press
Choose Your Own Adventure!
To tie in with the 2025 Book Week theme, ‘Book an Adventure’, Dave Lowe has adapted his popular ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ workshop, as a ‘presentation’-style 45- / 60-minute session for large groups of students, from Years 3 to 8. In this fun, highly-interactive session, Dave will share insights into ideas-generation and plotting, and give each student a story template, as well as all the tips and tricks they’ll need to make their own short ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’-style book that they can take home and try out on friends and family.
New Releases See all books
Touring Speakers See all tour dates
| Speaker | Location | Tour dates | Book now |
|---|---|---|---|
Brisbane | 01 Aug - 09 Sep 2025 | ||
Sydney | 25 Aug - 29 Aug 2025 | ||
Sydney | 25 Aug - 25 Aug 2025 | ||
Townsville | 28 Aug - 28 Aug 2025 | ||
Sydney | 03 Sep - 03 Sep 2025 |
What people are saying
Taryn’s creative writing sessions with Toowoomba Region Libraries were fantastic. Taryn has great content to share on the entire process of creative writing, editing and publishing which she presents in an easy and conversational style.
I was so incredibly thrilled to have you there! A little secret – you were an absolute favourite, both with me and the kids!! Thank you so much! I was doing some work with them after the sessions, and they were using your techniques! Amazing! If I can keep it going for a few years, I will definitely have you back!
Kyle's visit was informative and entertaining. He had a great connection to the students and presented his material in a humorous way. He was punctual and kept to timeframes. I would definitely recommend him to others.
We had a lovely Literature Event yesterday. Randa was fantastic, her sessions were thought-provoking, everything went smoothly and we have had great feedback from the staff and students. We are now thinking about next year and would love to have Randa back. We had a great time, thanks so much.
It was our pleasure to host former Heatley SS students and now published author/illustrators Haydn and Damien Crespan in our school library this week. Haydn and Damien read their book "The Adventures of Triz the Babysitter" to each of our year three year 1 classes. They also spoke about their creative processes in terms of writing the story and matching the illustrations to the text. They brought along dinosaur props for the students to interact with - one of which was an original model of Triz [...]
Gus provided wonderful examples of how his story ideas come from his life experiences and made the concept of becoming an author an idea the students could really understand.
In our student feedback at the end of this semester many of our students made a particular point of mentioning David's seminar as one of the high points of their study in this unit.
Brett was very commanding, was able to give strong credentials and good examples of what students are facing. Some student input would have been useful, to keep the two-way loop going.
Louise was a wonderful visitor. The kids were engaged as she talked about her writing, she read one of her books, and they brainstormed a new story that they could then use in class to write their own. She gave great insight into her life as a writer, and as the kids were all familiar with her books, made it much more real to them.
It was such a pleasure having Pip visit our school. Communicating prior to the event was a breeze, and she was warm and friendly from the moment she arrived. Our students had been studying August & Jones last term, so were beyond excited to have her at our school. Pip provided them with a great overview of her life and her writing process, linking it all back to the book. She was thoughtful in answering the kids' questions, and generous with her time, signing autographs for a huge number of stud [...]
An excellent spokesperson who involved the students from the moment he entered the room; providing costumes, music and an interactive slideshow, Matt had the students enthralled from the outset. Never have I seen the students so enthusiastic about starting a story as when Matt asked them to write the entrance of a main character. Two examples were read out and were quite hilarious. This was both educational and entertaining for the students and a great refresher of techniques for me.
Really Fantastic. Talked about stress, anxiety, lots of different health issues that effect impacting young people. Fantastic. Great sense of humour and really engaging with young people.