Advice on setting up journals and writing notebooks in classrooms May 2014
All of this will make much more sense once you have joined an NWP writing group of your own. It may be that you and your colleagues would like to start your own NWP group, in which case, please contact Simon on [email protected]
It's helpful to place journals and free writing in context for pupils - and for your colleagues - and especially your SLT! They need to know that, for teaching writing, there are at least two kinds of lesson:
It's helpful to place journals and free writing in context for pupils - and for your colleagues - and especially your SLT! They need to know that, for teaching writing, there are at least two kinds of lesson:
- 'how to' lessons - where you will teach genres, structures, patterns - secretarial skills as well as literary ones
- 'have a go' lessons, during some of which you will be expecting pupils to use their journals - sometimes to apply or reflect on thinking and learning, but sometimes to free write or exercise the proper authorial freedom to write exactly as they wish. Such books will be reviewed but not marked. You want to confer as much 'ownership' to pupils over the writing process as possible. By giving this kind of 'permission', engagement, independence and quality increase.
You need to have started a journal yourself and be prepared to write alongside your children. Explain that you believe that they are all writers, and that writers keep a writing notebook - or journal - in which they jot down ideas and experiment with writing regularly (at which point you can brandish your own journal!).
You might also refer to 'The Rights of the Writer':
You might also refer to 'The Rights of the Writer':
- The right NOT to share
- The right to change things and cross things out
- The right to write anywhere
- The right to a trusted audience
- The right to get lost in your writing and not know where you're going
- The right to throw things away
- The right to take time to think
- The right to borrow from other writers
- The right to experiment and break rules
- The right to work electronically, draw or use a pen and paper
It's important to 'silence the critic in your head' and find your own voice as a writer, and explore your own ideas without feeling that they necessarily have to lead anywhere (hence free writing - which Virginia Woolf used to do, and which Malorie Blackman does).
- Explain that you will not always expect them to share, because work may be too personal or too raw.
- Explain that later you will be expecting them to review their journal writing and maybe develop some pieces.
- Explain that they will all become 'response partners', because all writers need supportive, attentive and critical readers. You need to model the kinds of response you think may be helpful - according to the writer's readiness - at different stages in the writing process. (See Response partnership).
Although you will not be marking their journals, explain to them that you will look at their journals from time to time.
You will also conduct a conference with them about their writing journeys, at least once a term, and that they are always free to come and talk about their writing with you whenever they wish.
You will also conduct a conference with them about their writing journeys, at least once a term, and that they are always free to come and talk about their writing with you whenever they wish.