Teacher testimony 2015 |
Over 6 years in 20 + groups, the project has found that regular practice of writing from internal and external prompts, and sharing with others when ready, strengthens writing teachers' confidence and provides insight into the dynamic of writing.
NWP groups offer free support to writing teachers who wish to take control of their own professional development rather than let it be determined for them. Join a writing group now and strengthen the voice of the profession.
NWP groups offer free support to writing teachers who wish to take control of their own professional development rather than let it be determined for them. Join a writing group now and strengthen the voice of the profession.
NWP and me
I really can’t understate the impact the NWP has had on me, personally and my professional practice. Like many teachers of English, the last time I ever did any “proper” creative writing was when I was in primary school myself. So, over XX years on (!), I remember very clearly coming along to that first session of the NWP group at the MK Art gallery one rainy, dismal autumn Saturday. I was really looking forward to the prospect of writing again but felt so inhibited by worries that my standard of writing wouldn’t be “good enough,” that I wouldn’t have anything “meaningful to say” that I spent most of the session chewing my pencil, crossing out initial scribblings and moving around the art gallery trying to find somewhere to sit comfortably, just like the reluctant writer in a class. (I settled on an air vent in the end but was never sure if it was an exhibit or not). It was a huge relief that we weren’t expected to read our work out to the whole group but it was important that we shared in pairs because we were then reassured that there was nothing to fear, this was just “work in progress”, a starting point, etc. the key thing was we had just had time and space to try things out and get something, anything, on the page.
I was also inspired to start writing again after teaching KS2 literacy lessons in year 6 at St George's. Although much of what was expected was quite alien to how the process of writing actually works eg having to sprinkle your work liberally with connectives like “furthermore”, “nevertheless” etc to “up level” (aargh!) I did enjoy the time and space with the children to write collaboratively. It was fun giving them plenty of time and space to discuss ideas (half the time for talk, half for writing seemed to work well) and we had lots of quality discussion about the effect of openings, for instance…. How can we make the reader sit up and take notice? What detail about the main character do we want to share, hint at, hold back? How can we make the reader feel they are really experiencing what is happening? Suddenly all these questions, which I used to trot out rather mechanistically took on real significance because I was wrestling with them in my own story-writing.
After years of marking and correcting work, I still find it difficult to turn off my “inner editor.” I have tried to free up my writing by using a journal for daily scribblings, a stream of consciousness about writing even if it’s only to write over and over again that I don’t have any ideas. The key is just to get words down on paper. This has been really liberating and it shows how important writing journals which are never marked are of paramount importance in schools when everything else that’s written is judged.
It is important to give choice when it comes to the writing topics but not too much. When writing on my own, I value “warm up” exercises more than ever. Some days it’s just too difficult to plunge in cold. The short games and word exercises Emma has led us through have been invaluable. They somehow deflect you from the enormity of the task: “We are now going to do creative writing” as you’ve covered the page almost before realising it. And those early scribblings might be shaped into something later.
Planning before writing has its place but I have sometimes found the solution to a stumbling block in the writing, a problem with the plot, for instance, emerges through the act of writing itself. It is very powerful when that happens, it feels like tapping into the subconscious. I can understand when writers talk about their characters as if they are creations with their own free will.
How has being a writer changed my practice?
I am keenly aware of the blocks, nerves and inhibitions that beset writers. That some days the ideas just don’t flow, that if you wait for inspiration, you’ll wait for ever, and that sometimes you just have to write …. anything, words on the page, just keep going and see what happens. That writing is a habit you can develop, that it helps to sit in the same place, at the same time of day … because rituals can be triggers (so routines are important in the writing classroom) that talk is important … before you write but also after you have written something and need to find out how a reader will respond. How did I make you feel? What worked? Where can I take this next? That free drafting is important to release the ideas, to let creativity flow … that it’s good to put the first draft aside for a while to simmer and come back to another day, with fresh eyes … that editing is a very different process and should be put on hold until you have something to work on … that editing is powerful (and we English teachers are very good at it!) because you can cut and cut and what’s left “springs to life on the page” (Esther Freud) …. But that happens ONLY if you have something free and flowing to work on in the first place!
St Andrew's school
I have been asked to work with 6 children in year 4 for 45 minutes a week. They are all in receipt of pupil premium funding and my work is part of a package of support which might include, for example, short daily phonics practice with a TA. I was initially concerned that I don’t have much experience with “special needs” children in primary but I was reassured by the deputy that the aim was to help the child develop confidence in themselves and as learners so the key approach for me would be to work with them and their interests, not follow some “ready-made” programme or syllabus of skills practice.
There is time in a 45 minute session to talk with the child about their week and how they are feeling about their learning. They bring their English and Maths books to the sessions and we talk through what they have enjoyed or found tricky, going over any misconceptions or agreeing to address them at a later date if they prefer. We discuss something that interests or excites them and then decide what aspect of this we might write about. I make brief notes during our discussion to which we can refer later. We agree a title and then I encourage them to rehearse each sentence before writing.
One girl, Charlie, joined the school in year 3. She listens well in class and when prompted, articulates complex, interesting ideas. There is a mismatch between what she says and what she can record, however. Her class teacher has noted that in writing sessions she will sit and do very little, a sentence or two at most. I asked Charlie about why this is and it emerges that it isn’t the topics or her lack of interest in them that concerns her; she feels she just can’t get down what she wants to say to her satisfaction.
In the 1:1 sessions, I encourage her to formulate a sentence orally then support her through writing each part of it, encouraging her to apply her knowledge of phonics when tackling the more complex words. She is a strong reader and in our second session, spelt “quickly” correctly and “notice” because, she said, she had seen this word on a door and remembered the “ice” ending. She uses speech marks correctly and organises her writing into paragraphs effectively. She is less secure with medial vowels in words such as seat, heat and sounds such as “ow” in window, basically KS1 phonics. It is thought she may have moved schools a few times in this period. For whatever reason, her phonics knowledge is patchy and she is not experienced at listening to the sounds. We have time to stop and explore a spelling rule or phonic pattern as it arises in her writing. It feels a bit “scatter gun” sometimes when a complete revision of the year 1 programme is needed but this is happening in other TA supported sessions (of much shorter and more frequent duration) and it is more interesting and meaningful for her that we explore the patterns as they arise in her writing.
She particularly enjoyed the class work on updating fairy tales so in our next session, she wrote about her baby sister losing her shoe as an up-dated version of Cinderella. Next time she would like to write about an aspect of her family life as a version of Sleeping Beauty.
Working with reluctant learners in year 6 at St George's
Last year, I worked with two boys who were finding motivation at school a problem. The head asked me do creative writing with them, building on their interests and making the sessions as enjoyable as possible.
Zach had a troubled early life. He did start attending school regularly until year 3 and been identified with special needs including ADHD. He was in a stable, loving foster home and had great joy in life although he was restless and found concentrating in class difficult. He worked with a TA each day on spellings and other skills. I worked with him for 45 minutes each week on writing. He loved action adventure stories and would compose them aloud as I typed them up. I would ask questions such as ….Where is this happening? What does the hero see and hear around him? What does he look like? Can you describe what he is thinking and feeling? You said the car zoomed away …. as fast as what? Zach: a snarling wild cat.
We also talked about technical issues as they arose… That’s a great word. How am I going to spell that? This is a long paragraph, do you think it would help the reader if we started a new one? When should I do that?
This was a collaborative writing venture, certainly, but the words were entirely theirs and as I am a fast typist, we wrote a lot in a session, about 500 words per chapter, building into a novel of several thousand words over a term. It was very motivating for the children to have a print-out of the work each week and a complete copy for sharing at home, with class mates and teachers when they had finished the whole story.
Member of NWP MK. June 2015
I was also inspired to start writing again after teaching KS2 literacy lessons in year 6 at St George's. Although much of what was expected was quite alien to how the process of writing actually works eg having to sprinkle your work liberally with connectives like “furthermore”, “nevertheless” etc to “up level” (aargh!) I did enjoy the time and space with the children to write collaboratively. It was fun giving them plenty of time and space to discuss ideas (half the time for talk, half for writing seemed to work well) and we had lots of quality discussion about the effect of openings, for instance…. How can we make the reader sit up and take notice? What detail about the main character do we want to share, hint at, hold back? How can we make the reader feel they are really experiencing what is happening? Suddenly all these questions, which I used to trot out rather mechanistically took on real significance because I was wrestling with them in my own story-writing.
After years of marking and correcting work, I still find it difficult to turn off my “inner editor.” I have tried to free up my writing by using a journal for daily scribblings, a stream of consciousness about writing even if it’s only to write over and over again that I don’t have any ideas. The key is just to get words down on paper. This has been really liberating and it shows how important writing journals which are never marked are of paramount importance in schools when everything else that’s written is judged.
It is important to give choice when it comes to the writing topics but not too much. When writing on my own, I value “warm up” exercises more than ever. Some days it’s just too difficult to plunge in cold. The short games and word exercises Emma has led us through have been invaluable. They somehow deflect you from the enormity of the task: “We are now going to do creative writing” as you’ve covered the page almost before realising it. And those early scribblings might be shaped into something later.
Planning before writing has its place but I have sometimes found the solution to a stumbling block in the writing, a problem with the plot, for instance, emerges through the act of writing itself. It is very powerful when that happens, it feels like tapping into the subconscious. I can understand when writers talk about their characters as if they are creations with their own free will.
How has being a writer changed my practice?
I am keenly aware of the blocks, nerves and inhibitions that beset writers. That some days the ideas just don’t flow, that if you wait for inspiration, you’ll wait for ever, and that sometimes you just have to write …. anything, words on the page, just keep going and see what happens. That writing is a habit you can develop, that it helps to sit in the same place, at the same time of day … because rituals can be triggers (so routines are important in the writing classroom) that talk is important … before you write but also after you have written something and need to find out how a reader will respond. How did I make you feel? What worked? Where can I take this next? That free drafting is important to release the ideas, to let creativity flow … that it’s good to put the first draft aside for a while to simmer and come back to another day, with fresh eyes … that editing is a very different process and should be put on hold until you have something to work on … that editing is powerful (and we English teachers are very good at it!) because you can cut and cut and what’s left “springs to life on the page” (Esther Freud) …. But that happens ONLY if you have something free and flowing to work on in the first place!
St Andrew's school
I have been asked to work with 6 children in year 4 for 45 minutes a week. They are all in receipt of pupil premium funding and my work is part of a package of support which might include, for example, short daily phonics practice with a TA. I was initially concerned that I don’t have much experience with “special needs” children in primary but I was reassured by the deputy that the aim was to help the child develop confidence in themselves and as learners so the key approach for me would be to work with them and their interests, not follow some “ready-made” programme or syllabus of skills practice.
There is time in a 45 minute session to talk with the child about their week and how they are feeling about their learning. They bring their English and Maths books to the sessions and we talk through what they have enjoyed or found tricky, going over any misconceptions or agreeing to address them at a later date if they prefer. We discuss something that interests or excites them and then decide what aspect of this we might write about. I make brief notes during our discussion to which we can refer later. We agree a title and then I encourage them to rehearse each sentence before writing.
One girl, Charlie, joined the school in year 3. She listens well in class and when prompted, articulates complex, interesting ideas. There is a mismatch between what she says and what she can record, however. Her class teacher has noted that in writing sessions she will sit and do very little, a sentence or two at most. I asked Charlie about why this is and it emerges that it isn’t the topics or her lack of interest in them that concerns her; she feels she just can’t get down what she wants to say to her satisfaction.
In the 1:1 sessions, I encourage her to formulate a sentence orally then support her through writing each part of it, encouraging her to apply her knowledge of phonics when tackling the more complex words. She is a strong reader and in our second session, spelt “quickly” correctly and “notice” because, she said, she had seen this word on a door and remembered the “ice” ending. She uses speech marks correctly and organises her writing into paragraphs effectively. She is less secure with medial vowels in words such as seat, heat and sounds such as “ow” in window, basically KS1 phonics. It is thought she may have moved schools a few times in this period. For whatever reason, her phonics knowledge is patchy and she is not experienced at listening to the sounds. We have time to stop and explore a spelling rule or phonic pattern as it arises in her writing. It feels a bit “scatter gun” sometimes when a complete revision of the year 1 programme is needed but this is happening in other TA supported sessions (of much shorter and more frequent duration) and it is more interesting and meaningful for her that we explore the patterns as they arise in her writing.
She particularly enjoyed the class work on updating fairy tales so in our next session, she wrote about her baby sister losing her shoe as an up-dated version of Cinderella. Next time she would like to write about an aspect of her family life as a version of Sleeping Beauty.
Working with reluctant learners in year 6 at St George's
Last year, I worked with two boys who were finding motivation at school a problem. The head asked me do creative writing with them, building on their interests and making the sessions as enjoyable as possible.
Zach had a troubled early life. He did start attending school regularly until year 3 and been identified with special needs including ADHD. He was in a stable, loving foster home and had great joy in life although he was restless and found concentrating in class difficult. He worked with a TA each day on spellings and other skills. I worked with him for 45 minutes each week on writing. He loved action adventure stories and would compose them aloud as I typed them up. I would ask questions such as ….Where is this happening? What does the hero see and hear around him? What does he look like? Can you describe what he is thinking and feeling? You said the car zoomed away …. as fast as what? Zach: a snarling wild cat.
We also talked about technical issues as they arose… That’s a great word. How am I going to spell that? This is a long paragraph, do you think it would help the reader if we started a new one? When should I do that?
This was a collaborative writing venture, certainly, but the words were entirely theirs and as I am a fast typist, we wrote a lot in a session, about 500 words per chapter, building into a novel of several thousand words over a term. It was very motivating for the children to have a print-out of the work each week and a complete copy for sharing at home, with class mates and teachers when they had finished the whole story.
Member of NWP MK. June 2015