Genius takes time.
Many primary classrooms do not give children enough time to write. If we rush writing, we get rushed and disappointing outcomes. Our aim has to be to help children produce the best writing they can.
Amount of writing time
Renowned writing researcher Steve Graham recommends a minimum of one hour each school day for writing. For children in the early years, this should be at least 30 minutes a day (Graham et al. 2012; see also LINK). Around half of this time should be devoted to instruction and delivering feedback. The other half is for children to write.
Writing is thinking. Children can only think at a superficial level if writing time is short. Bereiter & Scardamalia call this ‘knowledge telling’. To transform ideas while writing, students need time to explore and shape their thinking (LINK). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied deep concentration. He calls this flow (LINK). He found that people reach their best thinking when they are given enough time to be absorbed in a task. Short lessons prevent children from reaching this kind of deep focus. They have to stop writing before they’ve really been able to get to work.
Frequency of writing time
Writer-teacher Donald Graves said that children become writers by writing often. He pointed out that writing once or twice a week forces children to start again each time. They never build momentum or the writer’s discipline. He suggested that children should have a writing lesson at least four times a week (Graves 1983). Teresa Cremin’s work also shows that time and space help children feel like authors. She found that when teachers write with their class, they come to realise just how much time is needed to craft meaningful and successful texts (Cremin et al. 2017).
In our own study of some of the most effective writing teachers in England (LINK), we found that practitioners who taught writing every day and gave protected time to writing, saw strong outcomes. Their lessons followed a reassuringly consistent daily routine (LINK). This wider research all supports Graham’s main message: frequent and extended writing lessons improve the quality of children’s writing (Graham & Perin 2007).
Schools that teach writing daily and for an hour are more likely to give children what they need to write their best possible texts. They give them time to generate ideas, plan, think, write, improve, proof-read and publish (Graham, 2019 and LINK).
Quality writing requires time.
References
- Bereiter, C and Scardamalia, M (1987). The Psychology of Written Composition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Cremin, T, Myhill, D, Eyres, I, Nash, T, Wilson, A and Oliver, L (2017). Teachers as Writers. Arvon and Open University.
- Csikszentmihalyi, M (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper and Row.
- Graham, S (2019). Changing how writing is taught. Review of Research in Education, 43, 277 to 303.
- Graham, S and Perin, D (2007). Writing Next. Alliance for Excellent Education.
- Graham, S, Harris, K and Santangelo, T (2012). Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers. Institute of Education Sciences.
- Graves, D (1983). Writing: Teachers and Children at Work. Heinemann.
- Kellogg, R (1996). A model of working memory in writing. In C Levy and S Ransdell (Eds), The Science of Writing, 57 to 71. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Young, R and Ferguson, F (2021). Writing for Pleasure: Theory, Research and Practice. Routledge.