Helen Shakespeare: Year 4

Using Writing Journals

‘The Rights of the Writer’ (see below) have had a significant impact on me and the children in my class.
The Rights of the Writer from the NATE writing project – Simon Wrigley

Click on image to link to download page

​When I asked the children to tell me what writing is for, I was shocked to discover a few of them think it is for the teacher to mark. Employing these anti-rules seems to have freed the children to write as writers as opposed to complying with a ladder of success criteria and writing in order to have their writing marked. When I think that the only reason I write as an adult is for a purpose – to communicate with someone or occasionally for enjoyment; it made me determined to get this across to the children. The beauty of writing journals is that the teacher never marks them. Many children find this frees them to write without fear of criticism or judgement. They also only write in them out of choice.

​I’ve learnt that if we want children to truly understand writing for pleasure then we need to give them pleasurable experiences of writing together with no aim other than to enjoy writing. Despite my literacy lessons being fun, the children never ask to write freely in their writing books. They do, however, whenever they can, ask if they can write in their writing journals.

​An advantage of being on a course and listening to speakers are the ideas you can take back into the classroom. I did this with Simon Wrigley’s Scavenger Hunt. After collecting their ideas (see the list below) they chose one to write about in more detail. We agreed to write for six minutes and then we spent another 10-15 minutes self-correcting and editing. Below are 3 paragraphs written by children whose work I don’t usually get very excited about!

​Scavenger Hunt
•             something red
•             something high up
•             a sound made not by a human
•             text (4-8 words printed) not on paper
•             slow
•             something missing

​This first example is from Mac, whose behaviour makes it difficult for him to hardly ever settle to write. It is an unaided piece apart from spelling and punctuation corrections.

Something high up: aeroplanes gliding
Aeroplanes were gliding around the sunset.
Below them was a bluish-green sea.
It was as deep as your heart would go if you were extremely happy.

​Tom is a reluctant writer. His piece was written independently and then edited with me.

Something missing: a chunk from a football
There is a missing chunk from the football.
It went missing last Wednesday. A hard kick sent it into the bushes.
A bird scraped it with its beak. This made the ball fall downwards.
As it fell, a piece of the ball came off. The bird took the chunk and flew far away.
He used it to make his nest more comfortable because the twigs were a bit too sharp.
That’s why there is a chunk missing from the football.

​This next piece is from Hamad who the day before had been flagged up as a child not making expected progress and achieving lower than average writing scores. The exercise really motivated him and I love his completely unaided writing response:

Something high up: White fluffy clouds
The clouds were metres up in the air. They were advancing slowly to the polished metal school gates in the sky. The sun was sinking down like lightning on them. They were as white as a polar bear’s snowy fur. It could be the most comfortable bed in the world.
​

​The children used their writing journals to collect their words and in this instance we did edit the pieces for reading out to the class (those that wanted to!).

​The children in my class love writing. They ask if they can write when they have spare time. 

​Employing the rule suggestions above (the rights of the writer) has been a little difficult to suggest around all the staff. For example allowing the children to cross out and redraft results in messy pages in their writing books. Allowing children time to think results in blank pages sometimes. Giving children a choice of where to sit means that my classroom can be a mess of children lying down, sprawling over cushions or spreading outside the classroom. The beauty of writing journals is that some of this potentially anti-formal school behaviour can be excused! I have certainly taken advantage of this and the progress in writing over the year is testament to the writing journals playing their part.

​Occasionally the children will write notes to me in their writing books. I think the ones I have copied out below speak volumes about the impact on their writing:

Normally I absolutely hate writing but I liked this probably because it made me rush and write quicker.

Normally I hate writing but I liked it. I liked it because it made me remember lots of memories, also it was fun. I want to do it again.

It made me feel like I was alone just with my pen, my book and my pencil. It felt I was transported to the past. All these memories floating in my head. All these memories I’d forgotten just came back to me

It felt like I was in the room and it was painful and tiring. That 6 minutes helped me improve my writing skills and I think I worked hard.

It made me think a lot and I can’t believe I did a page in 6 minutes

This piece of writing we did was tiring and lots of hard work! Normally I don’t like writing but I think this made me better. I think we should do this more often

​With regards to the impact on the Inklings, very often they continue pieces started during the club, at home. Sometimes they write at home and bring it to share for the club. Last term we invited their parents in and gave a presentation of our best pieces. A spin off from this has been that a few parents have admitted to writing at home and a letter has now gone out to all the parents to see if we can start an Inklings writing group for adults. I led the penultimate Inklings session today – the children told me they wished every day was an Inklings day.