In A Classroom Guide To Getting Your Year Right For Writing, writer-teachers Ross Young, Tobias Hayden and Felicity Ferguson share their secrets about having a great year of writing with your pupils.
With so many things to attend to and consider at the beginning of an academic year, quality time to think about what your writing teaching will look like is often at a premium. This eBook shows you how to gain that time, and how to use it productively for the benefit of both yourself and your class.
Spend the first two weeks following our advice and carry out a successful Welcome Project, which will help children in a friendly and reassuring way understand what writing and being a writer is going to mean in your class or school.
This eBook provides:
A suggested welcome project for setting children up in the EYFS as book-makers
An example of a welcome project for KS1
An example of a welcome project for KS2
Over 40 illustrated lesson examples and visuals taken from real classrooms and from the work of expert practitioners
Top tips from practising teachers
Answers to frequently asked questions
This book is essential reading for writing coordinators and teachers. By undertaking quality Welcome Projects, you learn what your pupils need from you to write happily and successfully. You can be sure that you will have laid the groundwork for a year that’s right for writing.
Children read stories, poems and letters differently when they see these texts as things they themselves could produce – Frank Smith
Establishing product goals (also known as success criteria or writing checklists) with your class for a writing project is one the most effective things a teacher of writing can do. Research shows that setting writing goals can yield an effect size of +2.03. For context, anything over +0.4 is considered to have a significant positive effect on children’s writing development.
Setting product goals is related to another evidence-based writing practice too: the studying of mentor texts. In Writing For Pleasure schools, product goals are established by the teacher and children together and only after studying and discussing a variety of mentor texts. This should typically be a whole collection of texts which match the kind of writing the children are going to be writing as part of the class writing project. Studying mentor texts prior to writing their own can yield an effect size of +0.76 (for children with SEND, this can be anything up to +0.94).
Product goals, at their best, are decided upon jointly between you and your class. They will include the things you all think you will need to do or include for your compositions to be engaging, successful and meaningful. Product goals are absolutely not limited to grammatical features or text conventions. When you ask your class your first most challenging and exciting question: What will we have to do to make these the best short stories that were ever written?, we won’t be expecting the main response to be ‘capital letters’ (important as this is), or ‘grammar’. We will want firstly to hear children identifying things which connect with the essence of the project. The following authentic set of product goals shows what we mean:
Here you’ll notice writer-teacher Tobias Hayden writes ‘see class poster’ next to some of the goals. This is to tell the children that they’ve already received a lesson on this ‘craft move’ (Young et al. 2021) this year and that there is a poster on display in the classroom which explains how to do it.
In contrast, here is a real example of an ineffective list of product goals I saw recently on Twitter. Let me explain the problem with this particular checklist:
Firstly, you can’t hear the pupils’ voices and goals in this list. You don’t get a sense of what it is this community of writers want to achieve in their pieces. You can tell that these goals haven’t been arrived at collaboratively with the teacher and only after studying a variety of mentor texts together – mentor texts which match the kind of writing the class is looking to produce for themselves.
Almost all of the goals are too vague to be useful. They are not linked to the use of specific craft moves and we know from research that this is important for future instruction (see LINK). For example: ‘language devices’ or ‘grammar’aren’t nearly good enough. These need unpacking and made explicit by naming specific craft moves. What craft moves have you and the children decide you want to try and apply?
Finally, we can see that compositional goals and goals for proof-reading are being thrown in all together. This is such a shame. As we know, revision and proof-reading are completely different cognitive processes and each deserves its own instructional time, checklist, and attention to be done at its best (Young & Ferguson 2022).
In conclusion, you don’t want to produce product goals which look like this example.
You don’t want to produce a list of product goals on the children’s behalf during your planning and preparation time. This is just a terrible writing teaching crime!
You don’t want to give them a list that is out of context – without first letting the children participate in the study of mentor texts (LINK).
You don’t want your list to be depressing – failing to share with the children why any of these craft moves will be so useful for the project.
Though incredibly important, you don’t want a list which is exclusively about grammar craft moves (LINK).
You don’t want to include things to do with proof-reading – these can have their own checklist and be discussed later into a project (LINK).
***
How you read mentor texts with your class and record product goals is important, and it’s not an easy thing to do. It takes expertise and practice. For more information, see our eBooks entitled Getting Success Criteria Right for Writing: Helping 3-11 Year Olds Write Their Best Texts (Young & Hayden 2022) and Reading In The Writing Classroom: A guide to finding, writing and using mentor texts and with your class (Young & Ferguson 2023).
‘Writing Realities: Examining new directions in writing research, instruction and learning’
Guest editors: Ross Young, Doug Kaufman (University of Connecticut), Felicity Ferguson
This special issue of Literacy will highlight new directions in writing research and instruction through the voices of international scholars and practitioners. It will present and extend recent research suggesting several core principles that must be attended to for effective learning of writing to occur (Young et al. 2022). These include: writer-identity, critical literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, multiliteracies, translanguaging and intertextuality.
Due to the increasing centralisation and commercialisation of writing instruction, pupils are routinely required to leave their own identities, cultural capital, thoughts, opinions and knowledge outside the writing classroom door. Through the rigid interpretation of national curriculums and published schemes, students may be required to take on a monocultural identity that doesn’t always honour or take advantage of their rich ideas and experiences. Learners from a variety of social positions –including those from diverse cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds– can feel alienated from writing because they have not typically received an apprenticeship in becoming autonomous and confident writers who carry with them a strong personal and collective writer-identity once they leave school. However, this special issue invites you to share how innovative instruction driven by some of the principles highlighted above canintroduce opportunities for young people to take personal responsibility for their writing and learn how to harness their own authorial agency. In the process, they may also learn how to live, work and represent others within an inclusive, outwardly loving community of writers.
This issue will be organised in a way that presents a cohesive portrait of the innovative shifts in research and instruction that the writing education field is currently experiencing. First, we would like it to outline the research and theoretical constructs driving these shifts, offering a context, an argument, and a direction for the reform and revision of traditional curricula and teaching. Next, we wish to share examples of effective writing instruction from across the spectrum of learner development, starting in the early years and moving through to further and adult education. Finally, we invite authors to present models for preparing pre-service and practicing teachers to engage in effective classroom instruction.
In summary, for this special issue, we are asking for contributions from scholars and practitioners working in different circumstances, paradigms and research traditions to submit papers that discuss and explore any of the following:
Writer-identity
Critical literacies
Culturally sustaining writing pedagogies
The physical, social, and cultural contexts of building a community of writers
Translanguaging
Intertextuality in the writing classroom
Teacher writers and action research
Submission instructions
Please send a 500-word abstract, title and short bio from each author to guest editor, Ross Young at literacyforpleasure [at] gmail.com by November 1, 2023.
For any questions concerning this special issue, please contact Ross Young at literacyforpleasure [at] gmail.com.
References
Young, R., Ferguson, F., Kaufman, D., Govender, N. (2022) Writing Realities Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Have you heard of SRSD instruction? SRSD stands for self-regulation strategy development. Sounds quite posh and complicated doesn’t it? It’s actually incredibly grounded and easy to understand. SRSD instruction is about teaching children strategies which enable them to be independent writers by using for themselves what they’ve just been taught. It’s one of the most validated and effective practices a teacher of writing can employ in their classroom (Harris et al. 2006; Graham et al. 2011; McQuitty, 2014; Koster et al. 2015; Sun et al. 2022). That’s why it appears as one of our 14 principles of world-class writing teaching (Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021a, 2022a, 2022b).
All children, but particularly struggling or less experienced writers, need high-quality teaching and explicit instruction if they are to fulfil their potential as writers. This is why SRSD instruction works so well. The concept is simple. Teach your class one craft move before inviting them to use the move for themselves in their writing that day.
Case studies show that the most effective writing teachers deliver instruction in keeping with SRSD when teaching ‘craft knowledge’ (Young et al. 2021), ‘sentence-level strategies’ (Young & Ferguson 2022c) and ‘functional grammar lessons’ (Young & Ferguson 2021b).
This type of grammar instruction typically goes something like this:
The components of effective functional grammar instruction
Step One:
Orientate Remind the children of the class writing project you are currently working on. This includes checking they know what they are writing and who they are writing it for.
Step Two:
Discuss Introduce the grammar move you want the children to try out in writing time today. Name the craft move. For example ‘fronted adverbials’. (Young & Ferguson 2022b). Then be a salesperson. Tell your class why this craft move is so fantastic and how its use could be so useful to them. Share how you’ve used the craft move in the past. Link the craft move to the class’ product goals for the writing project (Young & Hayden 2022). For example: ‘fronted adverbials’ is going to help us move between places and time in our stories, which is on our product goals list.
Step Three:
Share Models or Model Live Share models. Show children examples of where other writers have used this craft move in their writing. There should certainly be an example of where you’ve used the craft move in your own writing. You should also show examples from other students’ writing. Invite children to ask you questions.
Or Model using the craft move live in front of your class. Share some of the writing you are currently working on and show how you’re going to use the craft move to enhance your writing. Invite children to ask you questions.
Step Four:
Provide Information We always recommend turning your instruction into a poster or resource which the children can refer to throughout writing time. This helps them memorise the craft move and any conventions it might involve. For example, you might make a poster to accompany a lesson on using semi-colons. The poster can almost always be pre-prepared to save time and can remain up in the classroom over many days, weeks or even months. Children will be showing independent, self-regulating behaviour every time they consult the poster.
Step Five:
Invite Invite children to use the technique during that day’s writing time.Monitor children’s use of the craft move during your daily pupil-conferencing (Ferguson & Young 2021).Sometimes you might feel you want your children to practise the craft move prior to using it in their own writing. However, in all honesty, we find this is rarely necessary.
Step Six:
Evaluate You can invite children to share how they used the craft move in their writing during class sharing and Author’s Chair (Young & Ferguson 2020). If you have noticed a student who has used the craft move in a particularly powerful, innovative or sophisticated way during your pupil-conferencing, you should invite that child to share their writing with the class. The class can then discuss their friend’s writing and its impact.
If your teaching of these grammar craft moves is well planned and, above all, responsive to what your pupils need instruction in most, then, over time, children will internalise these strategies for themselves and so become confident, agentic, personally responsible and independent writers (Young & Ferguson 2020; Young et al. 2021).
It’s important to remember that the stages shared above constitute a good guide. However, teachers should also feel free to experiment with them if they want to. The professional judgement made by a particular teacher might be that a certain stage could be omitted altogether and that another stage might need more time devoted to it. For example, some teachers like children to practise the craft move prior to using it in their own writing, while others find this an unnecessary distraction. Some like to model the craft move live, and create their poster in front of their class, while others like to have made their poster prior to the lesson, or to share writing they have already crafted.
Finally, it’s essential to recognise that this is only one of the principles of world-class writing teaching. The reality is that it works best when interconnected with the other principles (Young & Ferguson 2021a). In particular:
Pursue purposeful and authentic class writing projects (The Writing For Pleasure Centre 2022)
Pupil-conference: meet children where they are (Ferguson & Young 2021)
You can find out more about any of these principles by using this link or by downloading, for free, our Handbook Of Research On Teaching Young Writers (2023).
Finally, if you’d like to read, see and use real classroom examples of SRSD instruction, you may wish to purchase any of the following publications:
References:
Ferguson, F., Young, R. (2021) A Guide To Pupil-conferencing With 3-11 Year Olds: Powerful Feedback & Responsive Teaching That Changes Writers Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Graham, S., Harris, K., Mason, L. (2011) Self-regulated strategy development for students with writing difficulties, Theory Into Practice, 50(1), 20–27
Harris, K.R., Graham, S., Mason, L. (2006) Improving the writing, knowledge, and motivation of struggling young writers: Effects of self-regulated strategy development with and without peer support, American Educational Research Journal, 43, 295–337
Koster, M., Tribushinina, E., De Jong, P.F., Van de Bergh, B. (2015) Teaching children to write: A meta-analysis of writing intervention research, Journal of Writing Research, 7(2), 249–274
McQuitty, V. (2014) Process-oriented writing instruction in elementary classrooms: Evidence of effective practices from the research literature, Writing & Pedagogy, 6(3), 467–495
Sun, T., Wang, C., Wang, Y. (2022) The effectiveness of self-regulated strategy development on improving English writing: Evidence from the last decade, Reading & Writing
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2020) Real-World Writers London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021a) Writing For Pleasure: Theory, Research & Practice London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021b) The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s Grammar Mini-Lessons For 5-11 Year Olds Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021c) A Quick Guide To Teaching Writing In The EYFS Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021d) A Quick Guide To Teaching Writing In KS1 Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Ferguson, F. Hayden, T., Vasques, M. (2021) The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s Big Book Of Mini-Lessons: Lessons That Teach Powerful Craft Knowledge For 3-11 Year Olds Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022b) The Science Of Teaching Primary Writing Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022c) The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s Sentence-Level Instruction: Lessons That Help Children Find Their Style And Voice Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Hayden, T. (2022) Getting Success Criteria Right For Writing: Helping 3-11 Year Olds Write Their Best Texts Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2023) Handbook Of Research On Teaching Young Writers Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
This is a great question. Firstly, there are different types of shared writing.
Sharing your writing
There is quite literally the idea of sharing your writingby crafting mentor texts for your class to discuss and read. These texts should match what you’re expecting the children to produce as part of a class writing project. Research has shown that this kind of practice can yield an effect size of +0.76 (+0.94 for children with SEND). For context, anything over +0.4 is considered to have a significant positive effect on children’s writing development. You can read more about this here.
Incidentally, if you establish product goals for a class writing project in response to studying a variety of mentor texts, this can yield an effect size of +2.03 You can read more about this here.
Shared writing
Next, there is shared writing. Modelling how to use certain craft moves before inviting children to use these craft moves for themselves in that day’s writing time can yield an effect size of +1.75. For children with SEND, this can be anything up to +2.09. Case studies show that the most effective writing teachers use shared writing when teaching ‘craft knowledge’ (Young et al. 2021), ‘sentence-level strategies’ (Young & Ferguson 2022c) and ‘functional grammar lessons’ (Young & Ferguson 2021b). You can read more about shared writing here.
‘Write alouds’
You also have the idea of write alouds. This is the writing version of ‘read aloud’ time. This is an opportunity for teachers and children to come together and write something collaboratively (shared), for pleasure, as a community of writers (Young & Ferguson 2020). This can be done on an IWB or some flipchart paper. Write alouds can be done in a single sitting or over multiple sessions.
Sharing the writer’s life
Finally, there is the concept of sharing your writer’s life. This is about modelling how to be and live as a writer. You can read more about this here. Sharing your writer’s life and writing alongside your pupils during writing time can yield an effect size of +0.54. For children with SEND, this can be anything up to +2.48 (Young & Ferguson 2023b).
Motivation (also related to ideas around goal theory; self-determination; engaging instruction; writer attitude and interest, and value theory) is closely associated with the concept of writing for pleasure (Young & Ferguson 2021).
Teachers should give special attention to practices which foster a positive disposition; children need to feel the relevance and importance of writing because, as Bruning and Horn (2000) rightly say, motivation is often what gets them through this cognitively demanding act successfully.
A possible hierarchy of children’s affective emotional writerly needs as articulated by Young & Ferguson 2021
The body of research looking specifically into children’s motivation to write is strong and growing (Young & Ferguson 2021, 2023). A lack of motivation can often be at the heart of writing underperformance, and attending to this is just as important for academic attainment as focusing on cognitive learning. Empirical findings consistently show how motivational factors are positively and directly related to students’ writing performance and achievement (Young & Ferguson 2021, 2023).
There are many different types of motivation that can be felt in the writing classroom. They all involve children knowing the value of writing and of being a writer. They are also about children knowing for themselves why they are making the writing they are crafting.
Attainment motivation – feeling a sense of wanting to write the best text they can.
Utility motivation – feeling a sense that learning about writing will be important in the future.
Intrinsic motivation – feeling a sense of personal enjoyment and satisfaction from producing the writing they are working on.
External motivation – feeling a sense of external pressure or punishment if they don’t produce their best writing. Alternatively, knowing a reward will be given for producing the best writing they can.
Situational motivation – feeling a sense of excitement about writing from those around them in class. This is about feeling part of a community of writers.
Teachers can help improve children’s motivation by employing the following strategies:
Develop yourself as an enthusiastic writer-teacher (Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021a).
Pursue purposeful and authentic class writing projects (The Writing For Pleasure Centre 2023).
Establish publishing goals for class writing projects (LINK).
Show children mentor texts which match the kind of writing they are about to make (Ferguson & Young 2023).
Establish product goals (success criteria) for a class writing project with your class (Young & Hayden 2022). Discuss how these goals are orientated towards helping the class produce their very best writing.
Let children generate their own writing ideas within the parameters of a class writing project. Let children write on topics they are knowledgeable and/or passionate about (Young & Ferguson 2022, 2023; Young et al. 2022).
Teach writerly techniques and processes through self-regulation strategy instruction. Ensure you explain why the technique will be useful to children before inviting them to use and apply the technique in the context of their developing composition that day (LINK).
Setting clear process goals for writing sessions (LINK).
Ensure children have opportunities to pursue their own personal writing projects at school and at home (Young & Ferguson 2021b).
Show enthusiasm for children’s compositions through your daily pupil-conferencing. Make sure you always celebrate quality craft (Ferguson & Young 2021).
Give children an opportunity to check their drafted piece against the goals established for the class project (Young & Hayden 2022).
Break proof-reading down into short, small and manageable chunks (Young & Ferguson 2022b).
Organise a ‘publishing party’ to celebrate the end of a class writing project (LINK).
If we want to attract children like bees to the idea of writing for pleasure, we must treat our classroom as a field and fill it with the sweetest of nectar – good literature.
Research has shown that there is a profound connection between effective writing instruction and reading. For example: reading, studying and discussing mentor texts, texts which match the kind of writing children are being invited to make for themselves, can yield a positive effect of +0.76 (Young & Ferguson 2021, 2023a). For children with SEND, it can be +0.94 (Young & Ferguson 2023b). To put those numbers in context, anything above a +0.4 is generally considered to have a significant positive impact on children’s writing development.
With this in mind, please find a list of some of our absolute favourite mentor texts that we like to use as part of Writing For Pleasure class writing projects (2023).
Research has shown that there is a profound connection between effective writing instruction and reading. For example: reading, studying and discussing mentor texts, texts which match the kind of writing children are being invited to make for themselves, can yield a positive effect of +0.76 (Young & Ferguson 2021, 2023a). For children with SEND, it can be +0.94 (Young & Ferguson 2023b). To put those numbers in context, anything above a +0.4 is generally considered to have a significant positive impact on children’s writing development.
Too often we see teachers explaining to children that a story must have a problem and a solution. Children groan as another story mountain planning sheet is handed out (Young & Ferguson 2023). Problem-solution stories don’t regularly match the types of picturebooks, short stories, flash-fiction and other literature children love to read. It’s therefore important that the mentor texts we share with children reflect the different types of fiction that are available to them. This way, children know they can write in these ways too as part of a class writing project. The six most common story arcs used in children’s literature are:
Steady rise (rag to riches)
Steady fall (riches to rags)
Fall-rise (man in hole)
Rise-fall (Macbeth)
Rise-fall-rise (Cinderella)
Fall-rise-fall (The boy who cried wolf)
In addition you have circular (a character returning to the place or the circumstances where the story began) and cumulative stories (with a new thing on every page adding to what’s gone before).
Below is the list of the poetry class writing projects we provide on our website and to our Writing For Pleasure affiliate schools.
You can see how children are introduced to early poetry anthology making through picturebooks in KS1 (Young & Ferguson 2022). This includes writing their first ever poetry anthology and a collection of Haikus.
In Lower Key Stage Two, children are invited to write poems about Animals, The Natural World and SensoryPoetry. The focus of these projects is to begin embedding key poetic craft moves, moves which will not only enhance children’s poetry writing but also their non-fiction and narrative writing too. In Upper Key Stage Two, children are invited to write Inspired By… Poetry, Poetry That Hides In Things, Anthology Of Life and Social & Political Poetry. Not only do these projects have a positive impact on the quality of children’s non-fiction and narrative writing but they also provide opportunities for children to learn more sophisticated and lesser-known poetic craft moves.
What’s wonderful about this progression is that, by the end of their time at primary school, children will have written hundreds of poems and learnt a whole-host of poetic craft moves. In the process, they will have learnt to paint with words and understand the reasons poets are moved to write.
Suggested class writing projects
For more information on these specific Class Writing Projects, click the link next to the project title.
This writing project is based on a couple of mentor books: The Puffin Book Of Fantastic First Poems edited by June Crebbin and Here’s A Little Poem: A Very First Book Of Poetry by Jane Yolen. With that said, it’s not necessary to have a copy of these books to undertake this project with your class – it will just help. It’s great to show a collection of poems to children (or a collection you’ve written) before inviting children to do the same. This is a classic: ‘Hey, I saw this book and thought it was cool – why don’t we make one like it?’ kind of writing project. You might want to explain what Edited by… means and perhaps ask the children to be the editors of their own class anthology of poetry.
This writing project is based on a mentor book called Haiku Baby by Betsy E. Snyder. With that said, it’s not necessary to have a copy of the book to undertake this project with your class – it will just help. Haiku Baby is a collection of haikus written for babies. It’s great to show this collection (or a collection you’ve written) before inviting children to do the same. This is a classic: ‘Hey, I saw this book and thought it was cool – why don’t we make some like it?’ kind of writing project.
Writing a series of haikus gives children the opportunity to write an impression, to capture a moment, to use poetry as a symbol and to make something familiar seem unfamiliar.
The poetry of the earth is never dead – John Keats
Children enjoy writing about the world outside. British poetry has a long tradition of connection with landscape and nature. We cannot separate ourselves from the natural world, and young people are increasingly concerned about it. This project allows you and your class to bring into sharper focus the joyful, healing, subtle, delicate or terrifying aesthetics of nature. Children can share their experiences of nature with others, and this is the most important aspect of the project. When writing a nature poem, children are aiming to share a particular experience, and we have to resist the temptation to write generally about it. It’s about choosing a diamond moment. We are lucky enough to have many experiences with nature, in urban jungles, streets, allotments, gardens, weather, woods, parks, beaches, rivers, seas, peaks, hills and playgrounds. Many of these experiences will be enjoyable – some may not!
This poetry project gives children the opportunity to write an impression, to capture a moment, to use poetry as a symbol and to make something familiar seem unfamiliar. Perhaps the children could even produce a literary magazine showcasing the power and fragility of nature.
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains un-awakened – Anatole Frances
Children love animals. They often ask each other what their favourite animals are and why. Many have pets. Regardless of where we live, we see a variety of animals, and they are important to us for many reasons. Poets write about animals in various ways, and many people enjoy reading or hearing such poems.
Writers sometimes simply focus on an animal in order to be playful and descriptive with language. Others use animals (such as snakes, wolves and foxes) as a metaphor to describe human behaviour, psychology and even philosophy. Some write odes to a particular animal. Poems can be memoir-based (prose poems). Of course, others will write about mythical creatures, as Lewis Carroll did in Jabberwocky.
Finally, if you read nonfiction texts about animals, you may notice that writers often use figurative language, or what we call painting with words, to classify and describe animals. With this writing project you can begin to introduce the idea that poetry and non-fiction can work in harmony.
Poetry: the best words in the best order – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All poetry is in some way sensory, and much narrative text is sensory too. Writers use the senses to express a feeling that is very personal. The feelings may be quite specific but are often also universal in that others will recognise them and relate to them. Writers might draw on their senses as they reflect on objects that bring back hidden memories. They might use their senses to bring nostalgic moments to mind. The senses can also be used to evoke a mood, to deliberately show things or to explore experiences in different ways.
This poetry project will give children opportunities to practise using sensory description; showing, not telling; observing and expanding on small yet significant details; making comparisons; and painting with words for the pleasure of the artistry.
As this writing project is similar to a writing exercise, it will help children to see the benefits of techniques that writers often practise and use. Children will absorb these techniques as part of their repertoires and will be able to draw on them again in all kinds of future writing.
Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery – it’s the sincerest form of learning – George Bernard Shaw
Writer Michael Rosen says the easiest way to write a poem is to read a poem by someone else and then say to yourself ‘I could write like that,’ and this is what this writing project is all about.
Sometimes it can be hard for writers to generate original ideas all the time, and it doesn’t represent how they always work. Poets and story writers alike find themselves inspired by things they see, read or hear from other writers, whether consciously or not. This is called ‘intertextuality’ or ‘found poetry’. You only need to look inside a writer’s notebook to see that they are forever collecting, investigating and imitating little diamond moments that they have found lying around in other texts.
The best way to understand poems is to read a lot of them and to read them often. Children begin to think about what writers are writing and why.
Alongside this writing project, you could read Love That Dog by Sharon Creech as your class book. It is written in a free-verse diary format, from the perspective of a young boy (Jack) who initially resists poetry assignments set by his teacher. As time moves on, Jack’s confidence grows, and he is able to respond to and take inspiration from poems with increasing sophistication. This book makes for an engaging, child-friendly and incredibly valuable demonstration of intertextuality.
Why else are we here if not to live with unreasonable passion for things – poet ‘butterflies rising’
This project focuses on poetry that hides in things. It provides children with an opportunity to showcase sensory detail in poems about ‘things’ that can often be touched, smelled, observed, tasted, heard and thought about. The things children own, find interesting, or are disconcerted by will also tell them a lot about themselves. This personal connection makes for a great writing project.
Writing about things can lead children to share and suggest something they might have in common with their reader. They might notice the same things or show something in a new light. The familiar can suddenly become unfamiliar.
Children will learn about symbolism. They will understand that the things we hold at a distance or the things we love can be a symbol for something else – once we dig a little deeper for those diamond moments.
Objects often carry within them memories that can be shared through poetry. This project could culminate in an exhibition for families and the local community to visit. The exhibition could be a great opportunity for others to reflect on and reminisce about things from their past.
The project also has strong connections to memoir. Children will be able to bring what they have learnt about writing effective memoirs into their poems.
Memoir is a unique opportunity to revisit yourself… You have to find the poetry in it. You have to find the poetry in yourself – Joshua Mohr
This project seems somehow fitting for children in Year 6 to mark an important time of transition from primary to secondary school. Children are going to create anthologies of poems about growing up and childhood. We highly recommend that you read What I’ll Remember When I Am a Grown Up by Gina Willner-Pardo with your class throughout this class writing project.
Poetry is a wonderful medium for looking back on our lives because children’s impressions and memories can be captured in a shorter, simpler and more natural way than in prose.
Not only is an ‘anthology of life’ a means for children to connect with themselves, it can also bring the writing community in your classroom together. This is a purposeful project. It is something that will be cherished and great care will be taken over it.
Children will achieve an anthology of personal poetry based on their memorable experiences. This writing project will give children the time and space to draw on their experiences of the past four years of writing poetry, to look back at poems already written and to write lots of new ones. They will select the best and publish them in any arrangement they choose.
In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets – Jonas Mekas
Throughout the history of this country, there have been radical ballads, songs and poems written with the aim of publicising and protesting against certain social and political issues.
They have been shared and performed publicly to create a sense of communality and to be an inspiration for radical action and change. They have been about class oppression, race, gender, war, injustice, inequality, disability, freedom, poverty, religion – whatever have been the preoccupations of the age in which they were written, so that a particular piece of history could be passed on from generation to generation and not lost. Spoken word poetry is also becoming increasingly popular amongst young people, and this project can harness that interest.
We all know that today’s children are very concerned about many social issues – human, animal and environmental. They learn about social injustice through the media; it may also affect their lives in a personal way. Writing political and protest poetry is important because it gives children a way of expressing their feelings and worries, asking questions about the world and their dreams and hopes for the future. Sharing their fears and concerns, challenging those who have responsibility and influence, and using their voice for social change can feel empowering and maybe even a little reassuring. And of course it’s a perfect example of the whole idea of writing personally, persuasively and for a purpose.
Below is the list of the non-fiction class writing projects we provide on our website and to our Writing For Pleasure affiliate schools.
You can see how children are introduced to early picturebook making in the EYFS (Young & Ferguson 2022). This includes making ‘list books’ and traditional information books with the focus being to teach someone something new on each page. Within these projects, children also learn to write ‘browseable’ information texts (Young & Ferguson 2023).
From here, when in KS1, children continue their book-making apprenticeship by producing information picturebooks and ‘chapter books’ (Young & Ferguson 2022). They also learn to make Instruction Books, A Class Magazine and Information & MeBooks which share more of their voice and personality. In addition, they have an early taste of writing to persuade and give their opinion through our Curiosity Letters project. We believe this gives them a solid foundation in non-fiction – ready to be developed further once they go into KS2.
In Year Three, children are expected to write Information Texts and Curiosity Letters. This continues into Year Four where children will once again write Information Texts and Instructional Texts. At this point, children learn about the six different approaches to non-fiction writing (Young & Ferguson 2023). Children also focus on using specific non-fiction craft moves, defining their topic, and using cohesive devices to keep their readers on track. In Year Five, children build on this knowledge and experience to write Explanation Texts. This is an opportunity to classify their topic(s) and explain key principles objectively or with wild imagination. Finally, in Year Six, children use all that they’ve learnt about non-fiction to write quality Explanation and Discussion pieces.
We believe that this progression provides ample opportunity for children to achieve the STA teacher assessment writing statements. For more information on this, please follow these links LINK and LINK.
The great strength of this project is that children already know this genre of text. They will have seen them at home or in the classroom library. It also allows them to engage in their phonics learning from the perspective of a writer and teacher. By inviting them to write their own ABC books, we can also sow the seeds of intertextuality – that you can copy the types of writing and books that you like. You can then make them your own. Once this lesson is taught, children can make books with ease.
Making a counting book is a project which the youngest of writers will find very appealing. It’s a genre which they will have been familiar with from a very early age and so they will be confident with it. They will enjoy showing off their counting skills, and choosing their own favourite objects to be counted. They will also get pleasure from teaching their readers and listeners something, and from the interactive element of everyone counting together when they share their book.
You only have to sit with your class at lunchtime to know that food is a popular topic of conversation for small children. The great strength of this project is that children already know this genre of text. They will have seen food books at home or in the classroom library. Children also like list books – where something different is shared on each page. They see them as an opportunity to share about the things they know about or that are important to them. It’s nice to invite children to make their Food Book for an audience younger than them like babies or toddlers.
It makes sense to invite children to make a book of first words as this is probably one of the first books they’ve seen and read themselves growing up. I would hope that you would have similar books in your classroom library too. Children like list books – where something different is shared on each page. They also see it as an opportunity to share about the things they know about or that are important to them. It’s nice to invite children to make their Book Of First Words for an audience younger than them. For example babies and toddlers.
Children love animals and will regularly ask one another which is their favourite. I also suspect that animal books are some of the most popular books in your classroom library. Why not take advantage of this fact and invite children to make their own?
Hopefully, children will already know about these types of books by learning about people who help us. They are also a popular board book for younger children – where each page shares about a different person. Children like making their own versions of these books. They will tell you about people they know, people who help them, and about fantasy characters that they love from the games they play and from the films and programmes they watch. It’s this kind of project that also lays the foundations for young writers understanding where they can find characters for their stories too.
Spend any time at all in a Nursery or Reception class and you’ll have children come up to tell you about things they are interested in or love most. It’s often spontaneous and they often have plenty to say! This is why they love making All About… Books so much.
This book-making project will show children that they can be knowledgeable about a subject and that sharing this knowledge is an enjoyable, social and satisfying thing to do. You and your class will begin to appreciate the pockets of ‘communities’ that make up a writing classroom – with children talking and sharing with each other their passions, interests and aspects of their lives. It is important for children to understand the power of writing as information giving but also to experience it as a social resource.
What’s wonderful about this particular project is that it can be adapted easily and can be repeated many times across the year. For example, once experienced with the genre, children can make All About… Books about what they are learning in the wider curriculum. You can also make similar books such as:
Children like to tell people who don’t know about the important places in their life and what happens there. Making a picturebook about a place gives them an early notion of information sharing and storytelling. This project can actually be done a number of times throughout the year with a different focus each time. For example: an information text explaining all the different things that can be seen at a certain place, a memoir text about a favourite place and what they did there, and finally, a story with a strong setting where something happens!
Children love to tell each other about the most important people in their lives, who may include not only family members but also carers and close family friends. Making a ‘list’ picturebook about some of them lets children write about what they know and make links between home and school. Other children will enjoy having this extra information about the friends they meet every day but who they may only know in the context of the classroom – so a great way to get to know everyone better!
These picture books are an early form of non-fiction writing, but they can also be seen as containing elements of personal narrative and even autobiography. The writers themselves will undoubtedly want to share them with those at home.
This project is quite versatile and can be approached in a number of different ways. For example:
An information text explaining who all the favourite people are.
A memoir text with stories about their favourite people.
A story with their favourite people as the characters.
All About Me Books give children the opportunity to share about themselves. They can tell you what they like, what they don’t like and other important information about them and their lives they think you ought to know. It’s a combination of non-fiction and personal narrative. Children enjoy reading about one another and finding out about things they have in common and things that are different.
Children accumulate lots of information every single day. It is vital to their development as writers that they are given the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with others and to experiment with the language and organisation of non-fiction genres.
This class writing project will show children that they can be knowledgeable about a subject and that sharing this knowledge is an enjoyable, social and satisfying thing to do. You and your class will begin to appreciate the pockets of ‘communities’ that make up a writing classroom – with children talking and sharing with each other their passions, interests and aspects of their lives. It is important for children to understand the power of writing as information giving but also to experience it as a social resource.
When children write about the things for which they are passionate and have a high degree of understanding, experience and knowledge, they bring themselves to their texts. Two genres begin to merge. We call this ‘memoiration’. The texts become a rich mix of memoir (personal narrative) and information. You’ll notice that not only do children make a connection with their topic but they also try to connect with their readership too. For obvious reasons, this project works best when children have already had experience in writing Information and Memoir books.
Instructional writing – the recounting of processes – is an important genre that is vital to science, business, and art and design. It is also, perhaps surprisingly, a remarkably rich genre, offering children many possibilities for innovative writing and for creating hybrids with, for example, information, explanation, memoir, poetry, ‘faction’ and persuasion. A good book that showcases exactly this is How To by Julie Morstad. Children can write instructions for a number of reasons: to share their expertise with the community; to enable others to take part in pleasurable, useful or necessary activities; and sometimes simply to help themselves remember how to do something they have just learnt. It is a genre of writing that they can stretch, expand and take in different directions. Why not be enthusiastic, entertaining, ironic, poetic, sarcastic and experimental and let your own voice come through?
Children like the idea of letters. They are full of curiosity about the world, and this is a chance for them to ask the ‘experts’ about any of the things that puzzle them. They’re usually very good at formulating their own personal questions themselves, so probably the only support they’ll need from you during this project is finding an addressee who is likely to be able to give an answer to their query. It’s exciting when the (often local) addressee replies, showing children another powerful and authentic function of writing.
This project offers you and your class a new and refreshing perspective on the usual ‘recount’ or ‘newspaper’ writing assignment, when, for example, children are asked to write about their visit to the farm or the local museum, and you inevitably end up with thirty very similar pieces.
The idea here is that you invite the children to write about something they’ve seen, noticed or experienced recently – the kind of thing that they are so often bursting to share with you and everyone when they come into school in the morning. Alternatively, they can simply write about something they are interested in and want to ‘get off their chest’. You can then collect all the pieces and make a class magazine, which you can read aloud time and again to the children and place in the class library for everyone to read whenever they like.
What a great thing to do – to give children access to a class collection of different pieces which tell about all the various happenings, big or small, in their lives.
Incidentally, there are now quite a few magazines on the market aimed at children from as young as three to seven years old. For example: Dot, Chirp and Okido. They should have a place in your class library too and can act as great mentor texts.
KS2
Information [Year Three – LINK Year Four – LINK – Year Five – LINK]
By writing about what they know and care about, children learn that they can use their expertise to inspire and awaken the minds and hearts of others.
Children accumulate lots of information every single day. It is vital to their development as writers that they are given the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with others and to experiment with the language and organisation of non-fiction genres.
This class writing project will show children that they can be knowledgeable about a subject and that sharing this knowledge is an enjoyable, social and satisfying thing to do. You and your class will begin to appreciate the pockets of ‘communities’ that make up a writing classroom – with children talking and sharing with each other their passions, interests and aspects of their lives. It is important for children to understand the power of writing as information giving but also to experience it as a social resource.
Instructional writing – the recounting of processes – is an important genre that is vital to science, business, and art and design. It is also, perhaps surprisingly, a remarkably rich genre, offering children many possibilities for innovative writing and for creating hybrids with, for example, information, explanation, memoir, poetry, ‘faction’ and persuasion. A good book that showcases exactly this is How To by Julie Morstad. Children can write instructions for a number of reasons: to share their expertise with the community; to enable others to take part in pleasurable, useful or necessary activities; and sometimes simply to help themselves remember how to do something they have just learnt. It is a genre of writing that they can stretch, expand and take in different directions. Why not be enthusiastic, entertaining, ironic, poetic, sarcastic and experimental and let your own voice come through?
By writing about what they know and care about, children learn that they can use their expertise to inspire and awaken the minds and hearts of others.
Explanation texts are a gift. All of us ‘own’ knowledge capital. Indeed, many people make great sums of money from disseminating this capital. Others, though, choose to share their knowledge freely because of the joy and the benefits it can bring to other people. It teaches your reader something, and this is the wonderful thing that children will learn during the project. This introduction itself is an explanation text. You can tell because it does three things:
It says what an explanation text is.
It says why it is a useful genre for children to write.
It says how it is best taught.
By Year Six, children will be very familiar with reading and writing information texts. Explanation texts are very similar, but where an information text simply tells you what something is like, an explanation text goes on to explain how and why things happen. Explanation texts are probably the type of non-fiction that children will read most as they go through school.
Children know about many things that their peers or adults around them know nothing about. It can be very rewarding and self-affirming to share this knowledge through writing. Children will become aware that they have valuable expertise to pass on to others. This class writing project will show children that sharing knowledge is often an enjoyable, social and satisfying thing to do. You and your class will begin to appreciate the pockets of ‘communities’ that make up a writing classroom, with children talking and sharing with others their passions, interests and parts of their lives. It is important that children understand the power of writing to explain and inform but also experience it as a social resource.
Every day, children explain things so that others can understand them. They often have to explain things to adults. There may be many topics from the lives and cultures of your pupils that you don’t know much about, so this writing project is an opportunity for your pupils to teach you a thing or two!
Explanations can be about something physical in the world (such as geography), things people do or even abstract ideas. It is best to write an explanation text on a topic you know a lot about. Think: do I know exactly why something happens? Or exactly how something works? Could this be useful to somebody else?
Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument, an exchange of ignorance – Robert Quillen
This discussion writing project builds on what children have learnt in other non-fiction projects in previous years. For example, they have learnt how to recount. They’ve learnt how to tell stories and write memoirs of their past. They’ve learnt how to give information to others and how to explain themselves. They’ve learnt how to account for and explain why things happen in both history and science and, finally, they’ve learnt how to hold a position on something they care about through persuasion. However, there are subtle differences between this project and all of the others we provide. Discussion isn’t just explanation. It’s not about simply giving facts or writing about the consequences of something, nor is it just a persuasive piece. It’s not there simply to promote and champion your position, nor is it there simply to challenge or destroy another’s. Instead, discussion brings all of these skills together. Children will learn to consider more than one point of view and use recounts, poetic metaphor, evidence, explanation and persuasion to better understand both sides. Writing discussion pieces is about being both thoughtful and penetrative.
We discuss things all the time. We weigh things up and discuss things in our heads. We hear people out – we might challenge their thinking from time to time and we will probably try to justify our thoughts with some kind of explanation. We might also challenge what we’ve heard but still be open to changing our own opinion. In the world of social media, globalisation and political polarisation, discussion is an important life and academic skill that children should be exposed to, and they should know how to use it for themselves.
Persuasive letters for personal gain [Year Four – LINK]
Sometimes we get the things we want and sometimes we get the things we don’t want. When children make requests, whether at home or school, they are often denied. It usually happens like this: their point of view is briefly acknowledged, then a list of rational reasons as to why they cannot have what they want follows, and so the status quo is maintained. Being given the opportunity to put forward a point of view and make a successful request through persuasive writing should capture children’s interest. At last they will learn a way of possibly getting what they want!
This project is about learning to write a persuasive letter for personal gain. Children will be writing to someone in a position of power or influence such as family members, celebrities, organisations, or to you, their teacher! Children are likely to focus on the following opportunities:
Purchase something or have something purchased for them.
Get a response from a celebrity, expert or organisation.
Do something or go somewhere.
Change their circumstances, responsibilities or level of independence.
Advocacy Journalism, as the title suggests, is when you advocate for something. It means you champion it, support it and try to stand up for it. This project will give children first-hand experience of undertaking and writing up original research. It will also provide the opportunity for them to learn about local causes and the power of community action. It is a legitimate way for them to learn how news/magazine articles are used to inform, entertain and persuade people.
This can be a truly collaborative project that brings home and school together. Parents and carers can be involved and children will see their writing ‘get to work’ by informing others in the local community about their chosen charity. They see what writing an article in a journalistic style can do. You will be struck by the sheer variety of local charities and the children’s personal commitment to them. You may want to compile a list of charities yourself which the children could potentially use. A great many children will, however, be able to choose charities that they, or someone close to them, have been directly involved with or received help from. This will make the project feel even more important to them personally.
Community activism letters and articles [Year Six – LINK]
This writing project sits comfortably amongst the other projects you might do this year, such as Discussion pieces and Social and Political Poetry. The project will move children on from the Advocacy Journalism project they undertook in Year Five and will give them a final opportunity to see that writing, if they use it carefully and intelligently, can be a powerful tool for good. This time, it’s about your class coming together and using their writing voices to try to influence decision makers, such as local government representatives, or raise awareness of the need for a positive change to occur in their local community.
If we want children to react and impose themselves on the world, then they must talk about, read and observe what’s going on in their own community. We as teachers must be observant to what the children themselves are concerned about. For example, it may be the case that children don’t all want to write yet another poem about Greta Thunberg, write out into the ether about saving the planet from plastic waste or receive a generic letter in response to their own from a multinational corporation.
People’s history [Year Three – LINK Year Four – LINK]
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten – Rudyard Kipling
Many interesting things have happened to ordinary people which are almost forgotten. By writing them down for others to read, we make sure they are remembered. Even though these events or experiences are not well-known or previously recorded in detail, they are still an important part of human history. Everyday events can be incredibly interesting, and it is important to write about them so that they are not hidden. Everyone in our society has a story to tell. By sharing these stories publicly, children learn that they can give a voice to those people who would never otherwise have had an audience.
People’s history writing has strong elements of Memoir, although the writer will not be writing about their own experiences. Instead they will be writing about other people they know personally or have heard of through family members, friends or the community. This project encourages a great sense of community. By bringing in and celebrating stories from outside your school, you can strengthen and enhance the sense of community and connection inside the classroom. There may well be gains, too, for the person being interviewed.
Biography is history seen through the prism of a person – Louis Fischer
This writing project will show children how they can document the lives of people in their communities. They will discover how the lives of ordinary people they know can be sources of great historical, social and personal interest – not only to themselves as the writer but to others too. All people’s lives are interesting, but we don’t always realise it ourselves. Everyone in our society has a story to tell, and by asking the right questions and sharing these stories publicly, children learn that they can give a voice to those people who would never otherwise have had an audience.
Biography writing has strong elements of Memoir, although it will be about other people that the writer knows personally or has heard of through family members, friends or the community. At their very best, biographies can carry within them great opportunities for poetic description and rich anecdote. One of the great benefits of this writing project is that the writer can bring in and celebrate stories that can strengthen and enhance the sense of community and connection inside the classroom. There may well be gains, too, for the person being interviewed and written about.
A good biography topic creates the possibility for reflection, empathy or a shared understanding of a person or an experience. Children will come to understand the role biographers have in documenting and preserving people’s past.
History is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood – Carl Jung
People are interesting. Everyone has a story to tell – and an audience eager to read and enjoy it. You might write your autobiography mostly for yourself, perhaps for the pleasure of looking back and being reflective, explaining to yourself how you became who you are, understanding yourself, telling your side of the story. Or you might write it for others to learn new things about you, or for friends to remember you by, or for future readers to learn about the time and the place in which you live. It’s a way of making and leaving your mark on the world.
This writing project has a connection to The Anthology of Life Poetry Project, which children will also undertake this year too. Your young writers will also be drawing on their experiences of writing Biography and Memoir in other years. Like Biography, People’s History and Memoir, children’s autobiographies will inform, educate, entertain and give pleasure to themselves and their readers.
To present a scientific subject in an attractive and stimulating manner is an artistic task, similar to that of a novelist or even a dramatic writer – Max Born
Reporting a science experiment clearly and accurately is important because every experiment can, in effect, offer new knowledge. In writing a description of the aims and methodology, writers are able to share this new knowledge with their community and perhaps inspire others to repeat the experiment or take it a step further. We suggest children devise their own experiments, which can be linked to the current class science topic or be an investigation into something of personal interest. We say this because the science reporting should be genuine and shared with others in the class. There is little point, and little to be learnt, by asking 30 children to write up the same science experiment.
