Writing Teachers

1. Writing Teachers Reading into Writing 2: Week 9

2. Objectives • Develop confidence in your own ability to write

3. Reading Log Peer Review • Bring out your reading log • Complete the peer review form with a partner • Share 1 book from your reading log that you have found particularly good and share it in a small group. Say why it has had a positive impact on you. • How does it work? • Why does it work?

4. What was writing like for you at school? • How do you feel about your own creative writing? • How do you feel about writing as a teacher at school? • On a post it write down in 1-6 words how you feel about yourself as a writer – stick the post its on a white poster the lecturer will provide at the front of the seminar room

5. Limber up the imagination Write for one minute on one of the following • Beach • Stars • Family • Dreams • Traffic jams

6. Sharing • Read out some of your writing to each other. • Do you enjoy listening to what other people have written?

7. A style of writing • Read the passage from Whistling Caves – 11 year old Emily has found the Saxon Treasure and has escaped from villains down a secret passage from the castle above into the mouth of a Cornish cave, but the tide is coming in fast – can she get out in time to be rescued by her friends in the small row boat? • Does it remind you of any adventure stories for children you have read? • What makes this exciting and popular writing?

8. Postcards • Showand read the postcard which predicts a disaster • discuss what might happen next in pairs • share with whole group 2 Writethe story of the day • share stories with each other • read out a selection of stories and discuss

9. Swap Addresses • Stick your first class stamp on your postcard (the one you brought from home) • Write your address on a post it • Swap your post it with someone (on another table perhaps)

10. At home – sending it • Write the address of your new post it onto the blank part of your postcard • Pretend you are a character and write the left hand part of the postcard so it leads into a great story e.g. Today saw a meteorite land nearby. Tomorrow we are going to investigate or something funny or from a typical adventure or something original) • Send your postcard ( do it tonight or tomorrow morning)

11. At home - receiving it.. • Read your mystery postcard • Write what happens to your character the next day (about 250 -500words- ish should do the job – about a page - ish). • Write it as a story rather than a quick postcard – so you can experiment and play with story writing – put in some dialogue (two contrasting characters will help here e.g. one timid, one bold or impetuous), some setting, perhaps some humour if it works…you know the sort of thing – the sort of thing you have been reading in children’s books. Write for a key stage 2 age group. • Bring your story to Seminar Week 10 to share with the sender of your postcard

12. Reflection • After you have finished your postcard short story…. • At the bottom of your story or on a separate sheet of paper, write your feelings about yourself as a writer.

13. Why do we bother to write? • It’s fun • We can invent funny as well as satisfying stuff • It is creative and teachers are creative people • It’s hard and we gain satisfaction from growing as we learn to do hard things (think of Zumba or football skills) • We give pleasure to other people when we read them our writing • Writing is something we can do together in the classroom ALSO PTO…………

14. English at the Crossroads 2009 One of the most positive developments over recent years has been the increasing tendency for teachers to demonstrate writing for their pupils. At its best, this involves teachers in writing with pupils, explaining their choices of words and phrases, and amending their work as they produce it. Evidence from the USA, where there is a long-established National Writing Project for teachers, suggests that pupils’ work improves when their teachers regard themselves as writers.However, many of the teachers in the survey, in primary and secondary schools, lacked the confidence to do this. As a result, their pupils were not able to see how ideas and language are created, shaped, reviewed and revised. P.48 English at the crossroads: an evaluation of English in primary and secondary schools 2005/08 (080247), Ofsted, 2009; www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/080247.

15. Excellence in English: what we can learn from 12 outstanding schools May 2011, No. 100229 Ofsted 16. However, more than anything, at the heart of the school’s success with writing is its approach to teaching through writing workshops. The subject leader has produced detailed guidance for staff on teaching writing and this includes how to conduct a writing workshop. Broadly, the strategy involves a great deal of writing and modelling by the teacher, with planning integrated at all stages. It is a step-by-step approach with pupils and teachers working together on constructing a piece of writing. In each lesson, the pupils work through a series of exercises before moving to a longer piece which is sharply focused on specific criteria. The pupils’ work, with its crossings-out and additions, shows how well these pupils operate as real writers, constantly looking to rewrite and improve. 17. The workshop approach to writing in the school has also developed teachers’ own confidence as writers.As a result, they tend to write their own texts for lessons rather than searching the internet for examples that might not suit their particular purposes.

16. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY MICHAEL MORPURGO SAYS….

17. Fearless Writers… Dimbleby Lecture 15/2/2011 http://www.michaelmorpurgo.com/news/read-michaels-dimbleby-lectur/ “At the heart of every child, new born, is a unique genius and personality. What we should be doing is to allow the spark of that genius to catch fire, burn brightly and shine. What we seem to be doing with so many of our children is to corral them, to construct a world where success and failure is all that counts. Fear of failure is what does the most damage.