Classroom display showing the number of sessions available until the publication deadline
Today was session two in our class project and we were generating ideas using a technique called Thinking ‘faction’. This is where you use your knowledge of fictional worlds, settings, characters and events and use them as inspiration for a piece of information writing. This was the first time I have taught this mini-lesson. As usual, I had a go at it in advance, so I could talk it through with the children before inviting them to try it out for themselves. I surprised myself at the ease with which my ideas flowed.
My ideas span interests from my childhood, my teenage years, adulthood and some recent experiences shared with my daughter
To give some structure, I created a sheet divided up into sections: things from films, things from books, things from TV, things from games/YouTube etc. I set myself a finish line of twenty ideas and it took me about ten minutes to generate fourteen ideas. I explained to the children that this would be a great opportunity to do lots of talking (talk for writing is extremely important throughout the writing process) while we were doing it and that I would be joining in with them to cross my finish line during today’s writing time.
This child has assigned both a knowledge score and an interest score to his two favourite ideas to help him decide which one to write about
What struck me at the end of this session was just how many ideas we had generated as a class. Twenty-eight children, each with at least ten ideas on their pages, had generated many hundreds of ideas in less than twenty minutes. Who says children won’t have anything to write about? Not me.
Tomorrow in session three: Planning using ‘speedy’ books
A writing station should support children’s independence as writers by giving them the tools they might need to solve their own writing problems. Self-regulation (knowing what to do and how to do it) is an important affective need to attend to in every writing community and supporting its development requires careful consideration.
What is in our writing station?
A mini-lesson archive – This provides the opportunity for children to revisit any previous instruction. Currently, it is organised into eight craft areas: Being Writers, Generating Ideas, Organisation and Structure, Fluency, Clarity and Accuracy, Developing, Word Choices and Spellings.
2. A section related to goal setting – This contains: to-do lists, writing calendars, mini-lesson evaluation sheets and a selection of class project genre-booklets (these contain mentor texts and suggestions for how to navigate the writing process).
3. An area for publishing materials – At the moment, we have: line guides (narrow and wide), blank mini-books, blank speedy books, publishing menus, some stamped self-addressed envelopes (for sending out bits of writing so you can receive something in return) and publishing templates.
4. A place for revising and editing resources – Here we store: one-thousand word dictionaries, openings and endings examples and a variety of useful checklists.
5. Some pockets for idea generation – At present, we have: some ideas hearts, topic suggestion sheets, narrative arc examples and writing wheels.
How is it used?
Some children visit it all the time; others seldom do so. Why? Well, it probably depends on their particular need, and possibly their level of experience as a writer too. I often see children using it who are already successfully negotiating the writing process and know just what resource they are looking for. At other times, it functions as a supporting act to a pupil conference I might be conducting where I need to refer to something there. In this case, I always take the pupil with me to find the resource so they can remember where to find it again and become more familiar with the whole station. Frequently, children use it to teach each other which is a really pleasant aspect of being in a writing community.
Final thoughts
As a rule, I tend not to put a resource into the writing station until I have used it as part of a mini-lesson. I also conduct a mini-lesson at the start of the year about how we will use the writing station. Like the class library, this is an area of the classroom which children enjoy taking care of. They also specialise in organising it and appreciate having their suggestions about its contents valued. You will find that there are certain items which are mainstays of this area, while others might emerge during the year based on pupil need, or sometimes demand! Why not build your own and share it too?
Our class library holds a treasured place in our writing community. Creating one works well if you teach our Being Writers mini-lesson called Doing What Bookshops Do at the beginning of the first term and should be self-sustaining throughout the year. This helps develop children’s affective behaviours. For example: motivation, writer-identity, volition and agency.
It has several other important functions. Below are ten that come to mind:
Simply, it acts as a publishing goal (a place where writers can publish their writing for others to read) while supporting children’s understanding of some of the real reasons they may be moved to write.
It can help writers to understand large categories in writing (narrative: story and memoir, persuasion and opinion and non-fiction) as well as sub-divisions (genres like mystery stories, poetry or match reports).
As it belongs to the community, it can be shaped the way you wish, so it enables children to experiment with genre either by hybridising, or by creating micro-divisions which meet their writing interests (E.g. sword-fighting stories, poems about animals, or funny school tales).
It connects reading and writing by giving children an additional option when reading for pleasure. Many children choose to read each other’s, or their own writing during this time.
It increases the range and volume of potential mentor texts for future study during a class project.
Physically, it sits at the centre of the reading area demonstrating its importance, and its status is further raised because it makes available a plethora of options when reading aloud to the class.
Making it portable helps when you want to read for pleasure away from the classroom, or even if you want to loan your whole library to another class.
It is a great place into which to publish your own writing, or that of other writer-teachers.
It creates an additional area of the classroom which requires organisation and management helping to develop children’s sense of responsibility and authentic ownership over their learning environment.
It has the potential, in a mature and developed writing community, to act as an originator of fresh class project ideas, and may spawn its own mini-lessons as you navigate how best to use it.
Can anything be published into the class library? Ultimately, yes, but you will want to teach some other Being Writers mini-lessons relating to publishing expectations in order to strive for quality. These may look different depending on level of experience, however, the principles remain the same.
Writerly knowledge is all the things writers know about writing and being a writer. But what is it they know, and why might it be important for our students to know this stuff too?
In our book Writing For Pleasure: theory, research and practice, we consider what a knowledge-rich writing curriculum would include. We believe it’s important that pupils know the craft knowledge involved in creating texts, including:
Process knowledge, knowledge about the processes, procedures, strategies, and techniques writers employ as they go through their writing process, generating ideas, planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing, and performing.
Genre knowledge, the typical textual, linguistic, literary and grammatical features genres employ to be at their most meaningful and successful.
Goal knowledge, how writers set themselves goals and manage their writing deadlines.
Knowledge about their reader, how writers will meditate on the purpose for their writing, gather information about and consider their future readership.
Knowledge about a writerly environment, how writers live and work with others, and the conditions which are conducive to writing productively and happily.
Transcriptional knowledge, including spelling and punctuation conventions and keyboard and handwriting skills.
Knowledge of how writers use their reading, including how they read to enhance their craft knowledge and search for content material.
Knowledge of technology and other modalities.
Knowledge of the affective domains considered by writers as they craft and publish texts. These include giving attention to their confidence, motivation, desire, competence and their personal and collective responsibilities.
A knowledge-based writing curriculum is essential because, without such knowledge, it’s hard for us to answer the following sorts of important questions:
If I gave my class two hours of writing time, would they know what to do with it?
Do I think students in my school would know how to generate a seed of an idea and see it through to publication or performance successfully?
Are my students going to know enough to be able to live the writer’s life after they leave my school?
In a knowledge-rich writing classroom, you’d expect positive answers to these questions. For example, students would know how to manage their writing process. They would have ready strategies to help them find an idea they were moved to write about. They would also know how to generate this ‘seed of an idea’ and see it through to successful performance or publication. They would know how important it is to consider the purpose(s) their writing is to serve, who their audience will be and therefore what this audience’s expectations might include. They would know which genre(s) would best support their intentions and what the typical features and conventions of those genres are (importantly, they would know that they can play with or break these conventions too). They would know how to manage their time by setting themselves process goals (things they want to get done) and product goals (strategies or techniques they want to employ in their writing to make it as meaningful and as successful as it can be).
Notably, they would know what to do when they don’t know what to do. They would know how to use their writing environment productively to solve their writing problems – including where they can access resources, and how to use them. They would also know how to lean on their writer-teacher, friends and peers for support.
They would know what sort of transcriptional conventions their readership would expect to see and would ensure their writing was as accurate as they could make it before publication. They would know how to use technology to help them in their writing process (for example: how to research for writing material, how technology can help them attend to their spellings or word choices, including using Google, online thesauruses and electronic spell checkers). They would also know how to use technology to support their publishing choices, for example through word processing, presentations, blogs and video or audio recordings.
They would know how to manage themselves. They would keep in mind why they were moved to write their piece in the first place. Even when the writing was hard, they would remember that there is a gratification to be had in that struggle. They would remember that, actually, writing is an intoxicating and satisfying way of life. They would use proven strategies to keep themselves motivated. They would also know what their personal and collective responsibilities to the class are as a community of writers living, writing and working together.
Finally, and most importantly, they would know how to successfully live a writer’s life after leaving school. If they wanted or needed to, they could live the writer’s life for economic reasons (knowing how to write with authority, daring and originality is great currency). They could decide to live the writer’s life for political or civic reasons – sharing their knowledge and opinions with clarity and imagination. I also hope they would write for personal reasons – as an act of reflection or record keeping. Finally, I would want them to know how to write for reasons of pure pleasure and recreation – feeling a sense of joy and accomplishment in sharing their artistry, identity and knowledge with others in ways that are profound and confident.
We share how Writing For Pleasure schools try to develop this knowledge in our new publication:
Language, quite simply, is a window through which we can reach out and touch each other’s minds. Anyone can reach through it… It is the most intimate act we can ever perform. We must be sure, always, to keep that window open – Gerry Altmann
Early talk
In a previous blog-post, we looked at how important talk is for children’s writing development. This article continues the conversation by looking at what the research says about how we can develop it. First, let’s define what we mean and then consider how much speech and language learning takes place before children enter formal schooling.
Talking
The ability to express one’s own thoughts and feelings.
Reciting
Repeating aloud a text from memory.
Writing
The activity or occupation of composing text for publication.
Dictating
The transcription of someone else’s spoken text.
Developing children’s language
The development of children’s own communication using speech and/or writing.
Age
Typical language milestones
Eighteen months old
At eighteen months old, children already have a vocabulary of around fifty words.
Two years old
By two years old, most children produce utterances of two words. These utterances are crafted by the child and are not the parroting back of an adult model. Speech and thought come together by the age of two.
Two and a half
Can utter sentences of three words.
Between three and four years olds
Begin speaking in full sentences. Children can say an infinite number of original sentences – sentences that they’ve never said or heard before.
Five years old
Children are able to use language with a capacity close to that of an adult. For example they use language for the following purposes: to persuade, influence or command others; to share and understand information; to tell stories (both real and imagined) and use language imaginatively and playfully. Children can typically say and write sentences of around five words.
From seven years old
Children usually acquire a full and accurate knowledge of their first language.
Taken from Halliday 1969; Bancroft 1995; Latham 2002)
As you can see, every single child brings a great deal of language learning into the classroom on their very first day of school. However, this learning can often be underestimated or overlooked by many who work in education (Avineri et al. 2015; Sperry et al. 2019; Burnett et al. 2020; Bergelson et al. 2022). Research also shows that children are most likely to succeed in schools that use and value this existing knowledge and build on it (Johnson 2015; McQuillan 2019).
Developing children’s talk for writing
If you can help your students regard their inner [or outer] speech as something they can in some edited form transcribe any time to paper, they will take a giant step toward becoming fluent writers – Moffett & Wagner (1992)
Children’s development as talkers relies on ‘a conversational context’. Children’s language develops when they are given the cognitive responsibility to use it. Ultimately, children must be the ones to construct their own speech and writing. Otherwise, they learn little (Latham 2002; Timperley & Parr 2009; Chuy et al. 2011; Avineri et al. 2015; Allal 2019). The acquisition of language is a dynamic and creative process, not the passive reciting and copying of someone else’s model.
Here we see the Nursery children in Marcela Vasques’ class being invited to ‘talk their books into being’ by having an Ideas Party. This is talk into writing.
Children’s talk and writing should be developed concurrently. Children must engage in egocentric talk, talking aloud to themselves as they write. They also need to write alongside and in happy dialogue with their teacher and peers. This means it’s necessary for children to play a daily and active role in their own talk and writing construction. They should also learn about speech and text construction from being ‘overhearers’ to their peers’ talk, help and instruction. In addition, children can engage in what we call parallel writing and co-operative writing, where they participate daily in the kind of activities listed below:
Children talk with one another before they write, as they write and after they write. These interactions occur in different ways and can include:
Idea explaining Children share what they plan to write about during the session with others. Idea sharing Children work in pairs or small ‘clusters’ to co-construct their own texts together. Idea spreading One pupil mentions an idea to their group. Children then leapfrog on the idea and create their own texts in response too. Supplementary ideas Children hear about a child’s idea, like it, and incorporate it into the text they are already writing. Communal text rehearsal Children say out loud what they are about to write – others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback. Personal text rehearsal Children talk to themselves about what they are about to write down. This may include encoding individual words aloud. Other children might listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback. Text checking Children tell or read back what they’ve written so far and others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback. Performance Children share their texts with each other as an act of celebration and publication.
(Young & Ferguson in press)
Instruction and being a writer-teacher
Despite what we might think, young children pay close attention to the conventions of adult talk and writing. Teachers should therefore engage in ways that are explained in the table above during daily writing time too. This is best done through systematic and daily pupil-conferencing. See our guide to pupil-conferencing with 3-11 year olds for more details.
Develop children’s talk for writing through explicit instruction, not through recite for writing activities
The problem with a lot of writing programs is that there isn’t enough talk nor is there enough writing taking place each day. Talk involves creating something for others to understand. Writing also involves creating something for others to understand. To develop writers, we must develop talkers. This is because what children learn by speaking, they use as a resource for writing (Harste 2012). The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s recent publication Big Book Of Writing Mini-Lessons For 3-11 Year Olds provides lessons to help teachers do just that. It’s about teaching children the strategies of talk for writing and inviting them to use those strategies during that day’s writing time. For example:
Tell it if you can’t read it
How to write in collaboration
How to share your writing with a friend
How to respond to your friend’s writing
Collecting language – speech
Can I copy you?
Leapfrogging using a friend’s idea
Talk about your topic…
Tell your story…
Go from sounds to letters
Talk to yourself
Pencil microphone – say it then write it
Whisper your sentence, hold it, and keep it
Think, say, write
Make a page – share a page
Write a little – share a little
Well, what do you want to say next?
Go back and wake your writing up!
Give your writing a tickle
These strategies then become internalised and children apply them with automaticity.
Talk to support children’s encoding
Back to egocentric talk, it takes a lot of working memory for children to take the phonemes of their speech and present them as graphemes of written language; otherwise called encoding. Encoding, fluency and automaticity in writing can only really come if children are ‘talking aloud to themselves’ and writing meaningfully and for a sustained period every day. Until that happens, children are relying on their working memory which leaves them with little space to consider the more complex compositional and transcriptional aspects of writing. As a result, their academic progress suffers (Louden et al. 2005; Herste 2012; Graham et al. 2012; Ouellette & Sénéchal 2017; Rowe 2018). We want encoding to be stored in their long-term memory as quickly as possible. This is another reason why children simply must talk and write every single day.
Talking, cognition and writing
In terms of cognitive development, if children aren’t speaking enough, then they aren’t really thinking enough. This is because much of their thinking is inextricably linked with speaking (Latham 2002). Therefore, growth in talk, writing and cognition can either be facilitated and enhanced or limited and deprived by the sorts of writing programs we choose to use in our classrooms. If children aren’t speaking enough, their progress is likely to be limited. The way in which cognition, talk and writing are enhanced is by having children engage in genuine language use – genuine talk before, during and after writing. We see this quite clearly in the typical writers’ process for children in the EYFS:
An example of the writing processes for an EYFS classroom.
In summary, the best writing classrooms are ones where children and their teacher are talking and writing with one another every day. Children talk before, during and after writing and the teacher talks before, during and after writing too. Teachers do this by delivering valuable daily writing instruction (Young et al. 2021), providing individualised instruction through pupil-conferencing (Ferguson & Young 2021) and by role-modelling writers’ talk by being a writer-teacher amongst their pupils as they write (Young & Ferguson 2021).
References:
Allal, L. (2019) Assessment and the co-regulation of learning in the classroom Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 27:4, 332-349 DOI: 10.1080/0969594X.2019.1609411
Avineri, N., Johnson, E., Brice-Heath, S., McCarty, T., Ochs, E., Kremer-Sadlik, T., Blum, S., Zentella, A.C., Rosa, J., Flores, N., Alim, H.S. and Paris, D. (2015), Invited Forum: Bridging the “Language Gap” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 25: 66-86
Bancroft, D. (1995) Language development In Lee & Das Gupta Children’s Cognitive and Language Development London: Wiley
Bergelson, E., Soderstrom, M., Schwarz, I. C., Rowland, C., Ramirez-Esparza, N., Hamrick, L., … & Cristia, A. (2022). Everyday language input and production in 1001 children from 6 continents.
Biber, D. (2023). Writing and speaking. In The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Writing (pp. 124-138). Routledge.
Burnett C, Merchant G, Neumann MM (2020) Closing the gap? Overcoming limitations in sociomaterial accounts of early literacy Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 20(1):111-133
Chuy, M., Scardamalia, M., and Bereiter, C. (2011). Development of ideational writing through knowledge building:Theoretical and empirical bases. In Handbook of Writing: A Mosaic of New Perspectives, Grigorenko, E., Mambrino, E., and Preiss, D. (Eds.) (pp. 175–190). New York: Psychology Press
Ferguson, F., Young, R. (2021) Pupil-conferencing With 3-11 Year Olds: Powerful Feedback & Responsive Teaching That Changes Writers [www.writing4pleasure.com/a-guide-to-pupil-conferencing-with-3-11-year-olds]
Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., D’Aoust, C., MacArthur, C., McCutchen, D., Olinghouse, N. (2012) Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: A practice guide (NCEE 2012–4058). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education
Halliday, M.A.K. (1969) Relevant Models of Language In Williams The State of Language Birmingham: University of Birmingham School of Education
Harste, J.C. (2012) Reading-writing connection. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.) The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp.1-8) Oxford: Wiley
Horowitz, R. (2023). Transforming speech into writing: Constructing a voice and identity in academic world writing. In The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Writing (pp. 105-123). Routledge.
Johnson, E. (2015) Debunking the “language gap” Journal for Multicultural Education 9(1) pp.42-50
Latham, D. (2002) How children learn to write: Supporting and developing children’s writing in schools London: Paul Chapman
Louden, W., Rohl, M., Barrat-Pugh, C., Brown, C., Cairney, T., Elderfield, J., House, H., Meiers, M., Rivaland, J., & Rowe, K. J. (2005). In teachers’ hands: Effective literacy teaching practices in the early years of schooling. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 28, 173-252.
McQuillan, J. L. (2019) The Inefficiency of Vocabulary Instruction International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 11(4), pp. 309–318
Moffett, J., Wagner, B. J. (1992) Student-centered language arts, K-12 Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Ouellette, G., Sénéchal, M. (2017) Invented Spelling in Kindergarten as a Predictor of Reading and Spelling in Grade 1: A New Pathway to Literacy, or Just the Same Road, Less Known? Developmental Psychology 53(1) pp.77-88
Rodríguez, C., Jiménez, J. E., & Balade, J. (2024). The Impact of Oral Language and Transcription Skills on Early Writing Production in Kindergarteners: Productivity and Quality. Early Childhood Education Journal, 1-11 [LINK]
Rowe, D. (2018) The Unrealized Promise of Emergent Writing: Reimagining the Way Forward for Early Writing Instruction Language Arts 95(4) pp.229-241
Sperry, D.E., Sperry, L.L., Miller, P.J. (2019) Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds Child Development, 90: 1303-1318
Timperley, H., Parr, J. (2009) What is this lesson about? Instructional processes and student understandings in writing classrooms The Curriculum Journal, 20(1), 43–60
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021) Writing For Pleasure: Theory, research and practice London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F., Hayden, T., Vasques, M. (2021) The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s Big Book Of Mini-Lessons [www.writing4pleasure.com/the-writing-for-pleasure-centres-big-book-of-mini-lessons]
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (in press) Real-World Writers: Teaching writing with 3-7 year olds
How important is the role of talk in children’s writing development? Case studies of the best performing writing teachers would argue that it is transformative (Pressley et al. 1997; Medwell et al. 1998; Langer 2001; Gadd & Parr 2017; Young 2019). A child’s writing and their language development mutually benefit when they are invited to craft writing amongst their teacher and peers every single day. Indeed, engaging in daily and meaningful talk and writing is one of the best ways to develop children’s language (Mercer et al. 1999; Rojas-Drummond et al. 2008; Green et al. 2008; Parr et al. 2009; Fisher et al. 2010; Dix 2016; Reedy & Bearne 2021).
Encouraging children to talk and collaborate together during writing time is an evidence-based research recommendation (Graham et al. 2012; Grossman et al. 2013; De Smedt & Van Keer 2014) and an opportunity to talk as they write improves children’s final written outcomes (McQuitty 2014). For example, children who talk as they write go on to write richer and more sophisticated texts (Wiseman 2003; Vass et al. 2008). This may be because talk gives children more working memory for writing (Latham 2002; Cremin & Myhill 2012; Young & Ferguson 2021) or because talk between children assists them in deciding what to say and how to encode it (Davidson 2007; Whittick 2020).
A classroom rich in talk, where children are encouraged to tell others about events in their own lives, the knowledge they bring into school, and the imaginative ideas their minds conjure up is the foundation of any high-quality writing program (Lamme et al. 2002; Tolentino 2013; Daniels 2014; Rowe 2018; Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021). Your class can have more stories and ideas for writing than you’ll ever know what to do with as long as you’re willing to give time for talking and sharing. Children regularly rely on talk for guidance, a model, expertise, assistance, and instruction (Wohlwend 2008; Kissel 2009). This isn’t a negative thing as it shows children’s commitment to being independent through what’s called co-regulation (Young & Ferguson 2021).
Children talk their texts into being. Talk is vital at all parts of a young writer’s process. Firstly, talking with peers helps children generate ideas for what it is they want to write about. Talk also supports pupils to plan what it is they want to write down. It helps them draft fluently, to revise, and to proofread with a readership in mind. Finally, talk is an opportunity to publish or perform for others (Young & Ferguson 2021).
Children talk with one another before they write, as they write and after they write. These interactions occur in different ways and can include:
Idea explaining Children share what they plan to write about during the session with others. Idea sharing Children work in pairs or small ‘clusters’ to co-construct their own texts together. Idea spreading One pupil mentions an idea to their group. Children then leapfrog on the idea and create their own texts in response too. Supplementary ideas Children hear about a child’s idea, like it, and incorporate it into the text they are already writing. Communal text rehearsal Children say out loud what they are about to write – others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback. Personal text rehearsal Children talk to themselves about what they are about to write down. This may include encoding individual words aloud. Other children might listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback. Text checking Children tell or read back what they’ve written so far and others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback. Performance Children share their texts with each other as an act of celebration and publication.
(Young & Ferguson in press)
Through our own talk with pupils during writing time, we teach children how to respond to other’s writing, ask questions, and how to give advice and instruction. Children begin to copy us. By hearing and participating in pupil-conferences, children become sociable and knowledgeable writer-teachers too (Ferguson & Young 2021).
This article looks to highlight the importance of talk in writing. Children can write all the words they can say. However, if we put words in children’s mouths, they end up not as writers but reciters. Duplicators of someone else’s voice. If we want to develop children’s language and writing alongside each other, we must give them time to talk and write together everyday. We must keep in mind that dictating and reciting texts isn’t talking or writing. Dictation and recitation are practices associated with a presentational-skills (Young & Ferguson 2021) or ‘writing readiness’ (Young 2021) ideology towards early writing development. Both of which are fundamentally flawed.
Neither scientific research nor the case studies of the best performing writing teachers recommend the slavish and repetitive learning of a text. It’s not in children’s best interests to spend their time engaged in long-winded ‘barking out of a text’. Instead, we must put talk and language development where it belongs – at the heart of the writing process.
References
Cremin,T., and Myhill, D. (2012) Creating Communities of Writers London: Routledge.
Daniels, K., (2014) Cultural agents creating texts: a collaborative space adventure Literacy 48(2) pp.103-111
Davidson, C. (2007). Independent writing in current approaches to writing instruction: What have we overlooked? English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 6, 11–24
De Smedt, F., and Van Keer, H. (2014). A research synthesis on effective writing instruction in primary education. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 112, 693–701.
Ferguson, F., Young, R. (2021) Pupil-conferencing With 3-11 Year Olds: Powerful Feedback & Responsive Teaching That Changes Writers [https://writing4pleasure.com/a-guide-to-pupil-conferencing-with-3-11-year-olds/]
Fisher, R., Myhill, D., Jones, S., and Larkin, S. (2010) Using Talk to Support Writing. London: Sage.
Gadd, M., and Parr, J. (2017). Practices of effective writing teachers. Reading & Writing 30(6), 1551–1574.
Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., D’Aoust, C., MacArthur, C., McCutchen, D., Olinghouse, N. (2012) Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: A practice guide (NCEE 2012–4058). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education
Green, J., Yeager, B., and Castanheira, M. (2008). Talking texts into being: On the social construction of everyday life and academic knowledge in the classroom. In Exploring Talk in School: Inspired by the Work of Douglas Barnes, Mercer, N., and Hodgkinson, S. (Eds.) (pp. 115–130). London: Sage.
Grossman, P.L., Loeb, S., Cohen, J., and Wyckoff, J. (2013). Measure for measure:The relationship between measures of instructional practice in middle school English language arts and teachers’ value-added scores. American Journal of Education, 119(3), 445–470.
Kissel, B. (2009) Beyond the Page: Peers Influence Pre-Kindergarten Writing through Image, Movement, and Talk, Childhood Education 85:3 pp.160-166
Langer, J.A. (2001). Beating the odds:Teaching middle and high school students to read and write well. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 837–880.
Lamme, L., Fu, D., Johnson, J., Savage, D. (2002). Helping kindergarten children move towards independence. Early Childhood Education Journal, 30(2), 73-79.
Latham, D. (2002) How children learn to write: Supporting and developing children’s writing in schools London: Paul Chapman
McQuitty, V. (2014) Process-oriented writing instruction in elementary classrooms: Evidence of effective practices from the research literature. Writing & Pedagogy, 6(3), 467–495
Medwell, J., Wray, D., Poulson, L., and Fox, R. (1998). Effective Teachers of Literacy. A Report Commissioned by the UK Teacher Training Agency.
Mercer, N.,Wegerif, R., and Dawes, L. (1999). Children’s talk and the development of reasoning in the classroom. British Educational Research Journal, 25, 95–111.
Parr, J., Jesson, J., and McNaughton, S. (2009). Agency and platform:The relationships between talk and writing. In The SAGE Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage.
Pressley, M.,Yokoi, L., Rankin, J.,Wharton-McDonald, R., and Mistretta, J. (1997). A survey of the instructional practices of grade 5 teachers nominated as effective in promoting literacy. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1(2), 145–160.
Reedy, D., Bearne, E. (2021) Talk for teaching and learning: the dialogic classroom Leicester: UKLA
Rojas-Drummond, S.M.,Albarr’an, C.D., and Littleton, K.S. (2008). Collaboration, creativity and the co-construction of oral and written texts. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 3(3), 177–191.
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Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021) Writing For Pleasure: Theory, Research & Practice London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (in press) Real-World Writers: A Handbook For Teaching Writing With 3-7 Year Olds
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Rowe, D. (2008) The Social Construction of Intentionality: Two-Year-Olds’ and Adults’ Participation at a Preschool Writing Center Research in the Teaching of English 42(4) pp.387-434
Tolentino, E. (2013) “Put an explanation point to make it louder”: Uncovering Emergent Writing Revelations through Talk Language Arts 91(1) 10-22
Vass, E., Littleton, K., Miell, D., Jones, A. (2008) The discourse of collaborative creative writing: Peer collaboration as a context for mutual inspiration Thinking Skills and Creativity pp.192-202
Whittick, L. (2020) Write a little – share a little [Online].Available: [https://writing4pleasure.com/write-a-little-share-a-little/]
Wiseman, A. (2003) Collaboration, Initiation, and Rejection: The Social Construction of Stories in a Kindergarten Class The Reading Teacher 56(8) pp.802-810
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Young, R. (2019). What is it ‘Writing For Pleasure’ teachers do that makes the difference? The University Of Sussex:The Goldsmiths’ Company [Online] Available: http://www.writing4pleasure.com.
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2020) Real-World Writers: A Handbook For Teaching Writing With 7-11 Year Olds London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021) Writing For Pleasure: Theory, Research & Practice London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (in press) Real-World Writers: A Handbook For Teaching Writing With 3-7 Year Olds
What do world-class writing teachers do that makes the difference? Seminar presentation UKLA National Conference 2021
A good place to start talking about Writing For Pleasure is to explain what it actually is. It’s a phrase and an idea which is open to several different (and quite dissimilar) interpretations, but for us at least it has a very specific meaning. We’ve obviously written our book about it, called Writing for pleasure: theory research and practice, which explains what it means for us and how it can be realized as what we believe to be a much-needed pedagogy, a pedagogy which we also call ‘Writing for Pleasure’.
In our definition, a Writing For Pleasure pedagogy is nothing less than world-class writing teaching. We can say that because… When children are taught using world-class writing practices, we know they write for pleasure to a high degree.
So, how do we define world-class writing teaching? When world -class writing teaching is happening, teachers and children together develop strong writer-identities in the classroom. When it’s happening, children feel confident and competent. It’s happening when children have a strong desire and urge to write. It’s happening when children feel they have personal control over their writing, and when children are deeply motivated to share their words and so work hard to craft meaningful and successful texts. World-class writing teaching is essentially the kind of teaching in which children’s affective needs are being met, when their emotions and feelings are seen as crucially important to their development as writers. When this happens, children go on to achieve exceptionally well academically.
So what gave us the impetus to take up the idea of writing for pleasure, and ultimately write the book?
We know from research carried out in the UK by the National Literacy Trust that, for many years now, there has been a decline in children’s enjoyment of writing, and in their motivation to write both in and out of school, with many children expressing indifference to or even an active dislike of writing. In fact, in 2020, the NLT reported that children’s enjoyment of writing was at its lowest since records began.
In addition, evidence has shown that too many students in England have been underachieving in writing.. As recently as 2019, for example, it was reported that only one in five children was achieving above the basic level in writing. So we feel confident in concluding that there is a significant link between lack of enjoyment and underachievement in writing.
From our own and others’ research, we have established that there are more specific connections to be made between children’s enjoyment, their achievement and their affective needs, with affective needs at the centre.
It seems that, for a long time, little attention has been paid by educators to the feelings, emotions and attitudes of young apprentice writers. And there’s no doubt that this negatively impacts on their enjoyment of writing. Children do not develop or see themselves as writers when their affective needs have not been met, and this in turn has a negative influence on their writing achievement. We see this as a really pernicious cycle of cause and effect, and so we were moved to write our book in the hope of taking the first step towards turning this tide of unhappiness and underachievement.
In 2016, when we were still classroom teachers, we started to question our own writing teaching. In the course of our careers we had tried quite a few of the major approaches to writing teaching in our classroom. We’d tried: The presentational skills approach, The literature-based approach, The genre approach and what is rather appealingly called The naturalistic/romantic approach. Each had its strengths and weaknesses. We decided to focus on the strengths of each orientation and to work to minimize their weaknesses. In the process of doing this we felt we had created a whole new pedagogy. A Writing For pleasure pedagogy. Incidentally, if you want to know more about these various approaches, we describe them all in the first chapter of the book. We think you’d find it very interesting reading, and are sure you would recognize many aspects there of the way in which you were taught writing yourselves.
In the early days, we wrote what we called a Writing for Pleasure Manifesto in which we defined these two types of pleasure. We especially like the second one – Writing for pleasure, the type of pleasure that comes after the act of writing. Knowing you’ll get a response from your audience and that your writing will be put to work – sharing your memories, knowledge, ideas, thoughts, artistry or opinions with others. There can also be pleasure in hearing the meanings others might take from your text. Pleasure can also come from hearing your own writing voice, from knowing you said what you meant to say or from achieving what you meant your reader to feel. Writing for pleasure therefore gives children a sense of empowerment and the feeling that writing has enriched their lives and the lives of others.
So, initially, our main focus was on children writing as pleasure and writing for pleasure. This was because we had read that when children enjoy writing, they are seven times more likely to write above the expected standard than those who don’t. We had also read that children who don’t enjoy writing are eight times more likely to write below the expected standard. So writing for, as and with pleasure seemed massively important.
What we wanted then, of course, was for the children in our class to write for and with enjoyment, and for the satisfaction and pride that comes from producing something significant, successful and meaningful. We also wanted to see if, at the same time, we could achieve exceptional academic progress. We were able to show that, indeed, when children wrote as and for pleasure, their academic performance did improve remarkably.
Over time, we deepened our understanding of children’s ‘affective needs’ and got a better handle on what enjoyment and satisfaction actually mean in the context of a writing classroom. Through our own action-research and from our reading of the research of others, we noted that the following affective domains were repeatedly mentioned as part of the most effective practices. Namely: self-efficacy, self-regulation, agency, motivation, volition and writer-identity. We continued to investigate and use writing practices which had a consistent reputation for attending to these needs, and began to write about it online. Gradually, other teachers began to reveal themselves as Writing For Pleasure teachers too. In 2019, we were given a grant to investigate what these other Writing For Pleasure teachers were doing in their classrooms that was making the difference (the difference being: having a track record of securing exceptional academic progress, with the children loving being writers). The study confirmed that the most exceptional teachers focused their instruction on addressing and developing children’s affective needs and these teachers used the most effective writing practices to do it. And finally, we became totally convinced -and remain totally convinced- that, if there isn’t a rich combination of both rigorous instruction in the craft of writing and attention to children’s affective needs, children will never become the confident and competent writers we want them to be.
For example, children who are not confident can’t write for pleasure. Children who don’t know what to do or how to do it, can’t write for pleasure. Children who come into school everyday not knowing why they are doing the writing they are doing – can’t write for pleasure. Children who have no ownership or personability over their writing can’t write for pleasure. Children who have no desire to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard can’t write for pleasure. Finally, children who don’t see themselves as writers simply aren’t writing for pleasure. They are writing for something else and I’ll leave you to decide what they are writing for…
As part of our work, we looked at many research studies, meta-analyses and case studies which described effective writing teaching. These 14 principles of world-class writing teaching emerged from that work.They are what drives a Writing for Pleasure pedagogy, and are what we saw Writing For Pleasure teachers use in their classrooms.The theory, research and practice which underpin each one is given its own dedicated chapter in our book.
What we’ve done in the book is:
Begin with an overview and critical reflection of all the major approaches to teaching writing and how aspects of all them inform a Writing For Pleasure pedagogy.
Then focus on each of the affective domains and their relationship to effective practice.
Then introduce the enduring principles of world-class writing teaching, and give a detailed exploration of each principle.
And finally, we have set out an extensive action plan for world-class writing teaching which we want to see gain ground in the UK, but which is as yet a long way from being realised.
We feel that our achievement has been to be the first in the UK to systematically draw together what so much research has been telling us for a long time about the most effective writing teaching practices, and to then use that research to develop the idea of Writing For Pleasure, and to show how, as a pedagogy, it can transform classroom practice in the most positive ways.
As I said at the beginning of this talk, the theory of Writing for Pleasure embodies everything we currently know about what constitutes world-class writing teaching. We don’t know it all yet, and so The Writing For Pleasure Centre will continue to read, observe, investigate, learn and write about it, always with a view to refining and improving our understanding. In the meantime, it’s our great hope that, through dissemination of the principles and practices of Writing for Pleasure, as many children as possible will come to receive world- class teaching and grow as a generation of extraordinary writers. This, after all, is what they deserve.
I thought I’d end by quoting a short passage from the preface to our book because it encapsulates our most profound beliefs about teaching both the writer and the writing, and also about the human relationships that are a part of doing just that.
Writing For Pleasure is a robust and rigorous pedagogy. It does not advocate for a ‘creative writing’ approach, though it encourages children to write creatively. It does not call for a return to a ‘growth’, ‘naturalistic’, or ‘romantic’ conception of writing, though it does want children to grow as writers. It wants children to learn about linguistic and literary features, grammar, and punctuation, but in such a way as to help them craft meaningful and successful texts. It wants children to write in an environment of collective responsibility but also to be able to develop their own individual voice. Finally, it wants children to learn the behaviours, dispositions, knowledge, skills, and techniques of writers, to write with purpose, power, precision, and pleasure, and to write for life. And running beneath it like an underground stream is the conviction that we as teachers should be helping children to see writing not as being directed solely towards a set of efficient outcomes, but as an enterprise in which they can and should express their values, ideals, and aspirations.
So, I hope I’ve shown you what writing for pleasure means in the deepest sense, that’s to say in our sense, and that you’ll see why as practitioners we simply cannot afford to ignore all its implications for our teaching.
Authors Ross Young and Felicity Ferguson share their compelling research, equipping teachers with the knowledge to reshape their teaching of writing in transformative ways and help children become empowered writers who write with purpose, power, precision and pleasure.
What Is It Writing For Pleasure Teachers Do That Makes The Difference? (Young 2019) was a one-year research project funded by The Goldsmiths’ Company and supported by The University Of Sussex which investigated how Writing For Pleasure teachers secured outstanding academic achievement from their pupils whilst also attending to children’s affective needs (positive dispositions and feelings towards writing and being writers). This research comes at a time when we are seeing profound underachievement in writing coupled with an increase in young people’s indifference to or dislike of writing (Young & Ferguson 2021). It was a requirement that the practices of the teachers participating in the research should be based on what studies tell us are the most effective writing teaching, associated with high levels of pupil motivation, confidence, agency, independence, desire, writer identity, enjoyment, satisfaction and pleasure. Teachers were also required to provide evidence and a track record of exceptional academic progress among their pupils.
From a rich literature review, we were able to identify the fourteen enduring and interconnected principles of world-class writing teaching. These practices have, for a long time, been associated with high levels of student achievement and feelings of pleasure in being a young writer. The literature review was based on:
Extensive research into the most effective writing instruction including meta-analyses of multiple studies.
Existing case studies of what the best performing teachers of writing do that makes the difference.
Research summaries from reputable literacy charities and associations.
So what can we learn from these teachers? Below we share what it was they were doing in their classrooms that was making the difference, including: the creation of a social environment and a positive culture for developing as a writer; high-quality teaching to produce authentic, confident, and independent writers; teachers writing, teaching, and giving feedback as writers, and teachers connecting writing with reading.
The 14 Principles Of World-Class Writing Teaching
Build a community of writers
Treat every child as a writer
Read, share, think and talk about writing
Pursue authentic and purposeful writing projects
Teach the writing processes
Set writing goals
Be reassuringly consistent
Pursue personal writing projects
Balance composition and transcription
Teach daily mini-lessons
Be a writer-teacher
Pupil-conference: meeting children where they are
Literacy for pleasure: connect reading and writing
Interconnect the principles (Young & Ferguson 2021)
Create a community of writers
Children saw their teachers as extraordinarily positive, caring, strict, fun, calm and interested in their lives and development as writers.
Their classrooms felt like a rich mixture of a creative writers’ workshop but also had the sharp focus of a professional publishing house (Young & Ferguson 2020).
The teachers supported and encouraged children to bring and use their own ‘funds of knowledge’ into their writing projects, meaning that children could write from a position of strength (Young & Birchill 2021).
Classrooms were a shared and democratic space.
The children talked of feeling confident and knowing that their teachers wanted them to try their best, take their time and to focus specifically on making their written pieces the highest quality they could be for their future readership.
Treat every child as a writer
The teachers held high achievement expectations for all their writers.
All children felt like independent writers who were achieving writing goals with regularity. They were praised for the goals they achieved in the writing lesson.
The teachers ensured that all their writers remained part of the writing community.
Read, share, think and talk about writing
Children were given ample opportunity to share and discuss with others (including their writer-teacher) their own and others’ writing in order to give and receive constructive criticism, writerly advice and celebrate achievement.
Writing was seen as a social act, and dialogic talk was important at all stages of the writing process.
Children were encouraged to talk about the content of their writing, their writing processes, and to share any techniques or strategies they thought were working particularly well for them.
Whilst talk was an integral part of any writing time, so was maintaining a low level of noise to avoid disturbing fellow writers (Whittick 2020).
Purposeful & Authentic Writing Projects
Teachers and children together considered the purpose and future audiences for their class writing projects. Because children were given the opportunity to generate their own ideas and had a strong sense of a real reader and a clear distant goal for the writing to be published, the projects were seen as meaningful (The Writing For Pleasure Centre 2021).
Agency played an important role within class writing projects. Children were encouraged to either generate their own individual ideas, share and work on ideas in ‘clusters’ or, as a whole class, generate an idea that they could all pursue together (Young & Ferguson 2020).
It was striking that these teachers were regularly refocusing the children on considering the future readership and publication of their piece throughout their projects (James 2020).
Class writing projects were worked on over a number of weeks.
Teach the writing processes
Teachers gave direct instruction in strategies for engaging in the different components of the writing process (how to generate an idea, plan, draft, revise, edit, publish). They scaffolded children’s understanding of these processes through demonstration, resources, displays, discussion, sharing self-written exemplars and also techniques children had used themselves.
Children were made to feel very knowledgeable about the writing process and confident in navigating it on their own. One way in which the teachers showed commitment to helping their children achieve independence was to allow them to develop and use a writing process which suited them best and to write at a pace which enabled them to produce their best writing (Hayden 2020).
The children were able to use the writing processes recursively and were not tied to a linear model.
Set writing goals
To maintain children’s commitment and motivation during a class writing project, teachers ensured that their classes understood the ‘distant goal’ for the project, that is to say, its audience and purpose (Hayden & Vasques 2020).
The class, as a community, also had a say in setting the ‘product goals’ for their project. This took place in the form of discussions as to what they would have to do, and what it was writers did, to ensure their writing was successful and meaningful in the context of the project’s aims (Young & Ferguson 2020).
The teachers would often share a piece of their own writing, in keeping with the project, to initiate a discussion about writing decisions. The children then used the outcomes of these discussions as an aid to setting product goals for their own writing. The product goals were similar to success criteria, but importantly they also included more overarching goals linked directly to purpose and audience (Ferguson 2020).
Product goals were put on display and were repeatedly referred to by the children and the teachers throughout their class writing projects.
The teachers set loose ‘process goals’ for writing time to help the class generally stay on track, without forcing children to keep to a certain pace or writing process.
Be reassuringly consistent
The teachers showed excellent classroom organisation and behaviour management. There was strong emphasis on routines, promoting self-regulation, expectations and focused collaborative learning among the children.
Teachers had a clear routine of mini-lesson (10 to 20 minutes), writing time (30-40 minutes) and class sharing/author’s chair (10-15 minutes) (Young & Ferguson 2020).
The mini lessons were a short direct instruction on an aspect of writing which was likely to be useful to the children during that day’s writing. The teachers taught from their own craft, regularly sharing their writing ‘tips, tricks and secrets’; alternatively, they would share examples from literature taken from the class library (The Writing For Pleasure Centre 2020).
In the class-sharing / author’s chair session, children would share their developing pieces and discuss with their peers the writing goals they had achieved that day (Harris 2020).
Pursue personal writing projects
The teachers understood how essential it is that children are given time to write for a sustained period every day and to work on both class and personal writing projects (Vasques 2020; Hayden & Vasques 2021).
Children were given at least one timetabled hour a week to engage in personal writing projects. However, the teachers also encouraged children to pursue personal writing in little pockets of time throughout the week.
Children transferred knowledge and skills learnt in class writing projects and used them expertly and successfully in their personal ones.
The teachers set up routines where personal writing project books went to and fro between school and home every day. This meant that children could be in a constant state of composition.
Balance composition and transcription
The teachers focused on giving direct instruction in the ‘generalities’ of good writing. They taught writing lessons which would help that day but which would serve children in future writing projects too.
They ensured that they taught the right lessons at the right time, with the emphasis on composition at the beginning of a writing project and more focus on teaching good transcriptional techniques and strategies later.
The teachers had high expectations for transcriptional accuracy, spelling and handwriting and wanted the children to take pride in their final written products. They encouraged children to concentrate on composing their piece (or part of their piece) before giving full attention to making it transcriptionally accurate.
They allocated specific time for children to focus on revising their pieces prior to editing them. Thus, revision and editing had separate and specific status.
They also asked children to regularly stop, re-read and share their work with their peers. By re-reading, the children had an opportunity to revise and edit their developing pieces as they were progressing (Whittick 2020).
There was a good balance between discussing what the content of the children’s writing projects might be, how the writing could be organised to be successful, and the explicit teaching of different writing processes.
The teachers were very aware that, if grammar was to be understood in a meaningful way, it must be taught functionally and applied and examined in the context of real composition (The Writing For Pleasure Centre 2020).
Teach daily mini-lessons
Children learned numerous strategies and techniques that they could employ independently. They were taught strategies for managing every part of the writing process and they knew how to use them across all class and personal writing projects.
Self-regulation strategies and resources were introduced carefully and given dedicated instructional time. In mini-lessons, the teachers would illustrate the benefit of a writing strategy or resource with personal reference to their own experience as a writer, before modelling and encouraging the children to use it that day if possible. The strategies and techniques were offered in the spirit of a fellow writer sharing their own writerly knowledge and their ‘tricks’ (Hayden 2020).
These teachers made use of their working walls for ‘advertising’ and sharing self-regulation strategies.
Be a writer-teacher
Teachers wrote for pleasure in their own lives outside the classroom. They used their literate lives as an education tool in the classroom (Bean 2020).
The teachers regularly wrote and shared their writing with their class. They would also share their own finished pieces in relation to the projects they were asking the children to engage in, and would take advice from the children on compositions they were in the process of developing.
The teachers would readily share the tricks, tips and ‘secret’ strategies that they habitually employed in their own writing and would invite children to give them a try too.
Pupil conference: meet children where they are
The teachers believed that a rich response to children’s writing was crucial. Whilst they used both written and verbal feedback, they particularly emphasised the usefulness of ‘live’ verbal feedback, which they felt was immediate, relevant and allowed the child to reflect on and attend to learning points raised while still actually engaged in their writing (Young & Ferguson 2020).
Conferences were short, friendly, supportive and incredibly positive. The children looked forward to these ‘conversations’ because they knew they would receive genuine praise for and celebration of the writing goals they were achieving and also good advice as to how they could improve their developing compositions further.
The teachers were able to undertake pupil-conferencing in a systematic way and were successful because their children and classrooms were settled, focused, highly organised and self-regulating. Behavioural expectations were also made very clear.
Literacy for pleasure: connect reading and writing
The teachers looked to build a community of readers and writers concurrently.
They taught using a reading for pleasure pedagogy (Cremin et al 2014).
They had print-rich classrooms which included stories, non-fiction, poetry, newspapers, magazines and the children’s own published texts.
The teachers read aloud every day to their classes with pleasure and enthusiasm, including poetry, picture books, chapter books, non-fiction texts and sometimes their own writing.
The teachers encouraged children to make links between what they were reading, their own lives and potential writing ideas. They discussed authors’ themes and analysed their craft, understanding and encouraging the use of intertextuality, and writing in personal response to texts read (Young & Ferguson 2020).
They understood that volitional reading can lead to volitional writing, ensuring that during independent reading time children could also write in their personal writing project books if they felt an urge to do so (Taylor & Clarke 2021).
Children collected words, phrases and other good examples of a writer’s craft in the hope that they might come in useful at a later date.
Conclusion What we have learned from these Writing For Pleasure teachers is that, through an intellectual and practical commitment to the fourteen principles of world-class writing teaching, it is possible to transform classroom practice in the most significant and positive ways. Children are empowered not only to achieve exceptionally well academically, but also to grow as writers who write with purpose, power, precision and pleasure.
References:
Cremin, T., Mottram, M., Collins, F., Powell, S., Safford, K., (2014) Building Communities Of Engaged Readers: Reading For Pleasure London: Routledge
Taylor, L., Clarke, P., (2021) We read, we write: reconsidering reading-writing relationships in primary school children Literacy 55(1) pp.14-24
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021) Writing For Pleasure: theory, research and practice London: Routledge
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2020) Real-World Writers: a handbook for teaching writing with 7-11 year olds London: Routledge
South Downs NWP Convenor and secondary English teacher, Theresa Gooda, shares her experience of writing as part of the UKLA Teachers’ Writing Group.
As we pass ‘Freedom Day’ and the heightened messages about ‘stopping the spread’, it has been wonderful to welcome a different sort of spread: the proliferation of teachers’ writing groups. It is heartening, in these troubled times, to know that the practice of teachers writing, the opportunity for personal reflection about writing, and the possibility of changing practice through regular dialogic conversations with colleagues about writing, continues to spread. Because we know, of course, that voice (in writing as well as speech) is ‘created’, both unconsciously but also deliberately constructed, in dialogue with other voices (Bakhtin, 1986).
As well as being privileged to lead the South Downs NWP group, and recently been invited to be part of the wonderful UEA NWP group, I have also lately participated in a new venture at UKLA: their Teachers’ Writing Group, run by Ross Young at Writing 4 Pleasure. They share similar principles with NWP about being part of a community that promotes research-informed writing teaching, and about the importance of being a writing teacher generally.
Like much of our lockdown and post-lockdown life, meetings are remote, via Zoom. In the first meeting, in early June, participants were invited to experiment with dabbling as an idea generation technique alongside the reading of a children’s book.
In July’s meeting, the work of writer-teacher Peter Elbow was championed, and in particular the value of free writing.
Mostly though, the group achieved that joyful, valuable thing we all need: of carving out space and time to write. I’m already looking forward to August’s meeting.
