Inviting Writing

Teaching and Learning Writing Across the Primary Curriculum

Adam Bushnell, David Waugh, Adam Bushnell, David Waugh, Author

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781473991620, 9781473991613
• eBook ISBN: 9781526414830
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

With recent research findings by The National Literacy Trust indicating that 1 in 2 children enjoy writing, should primary school teachers be using it more? There are opportunities for teaching and learning writing in all subjects and all lessons.

Inviting Writing supports you to find these opportunities and to plan, assess and develop children's writing for a range of purposes in a range of styles. Chapters cover every curriculum subject and explore the unique writing opportunities for each one. It helps you to focus on teaching the skills of composition and on taking writing forward. Examples of good practice are included throughout, alongside suggestions for teaching activities. This book also outlines the many ways in which children?s writing can be evidenced and encourages you to reconsider the ways in which children?s progress in writing can be tracked and captured.

This is a practical guide to teaching writing across the curriculum.  

1 Writing in English

David Waugh

Teachers' Standards

Standard 3 – Demonstrate Good Subject and Curriculum Knowledge

• have a secure knowledge of the relevant subject(s) and curriculum areas, foster and maintain pupils' interest in the subject, and address misunderstandings
• demonstrate a critical understanding of developments in the subject and curriculum areas, and promote the value of scholarship
• demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting high standards of literacy, articulacy and the correct use of standard English, whatever the teacher's specialist subject

Standard 4 – Plan and Teach Well-structured Lessons

• impart knowledge and develop understanding through effective use of lesson time
• promote a love of learning and children's intellectual curiosity

Key Questions

• How can we make writing an inviting and exciting activity in English lessons?
• How can we balance the need for accurate transcription with the development of compositional skills?
• What is the role of collaborative writing and teacher writing?
• How can we give children a repertoire for writing by using texts as a starting point?

Introduction

The Department for Education (DfE, 2012) produced a report which synthesised research on children's writing. Using research reviews of international evidence (Graham et al., 2012; Gillespie and Graham, 2010; Andrews et al., 2009; Santangelo and Olinghouse, 2009), it claimed that one of the key pedagogical approaches which had been shown to improve children's writing was teaching pupils the writing process. The report provides examples of how this might look in the classroom.

• Teach pupils strategies/tools for the various components of the writing process such as: planning; drafting; sharing; evaluating; revising and editing; summarising; sentence combining
• Gradually shift responsibility from the teacher to the pupil so that they become independent writers
• Guide pupils to choose and use suitable writing strategies
• Encourage pupils to be flexible when using the different writing components
• Engage them in pre-writing activities where they can assess what they already know, research an unfamiliar topic, or arrange their ideas visually

(DfE, 2012, p12)

There is clearly an important role for teachers in modelling writing, but what aspects of writing might be involved? In this chapter, we will look at both the compositional aspects of writing in English and the transcriptional elements.

Composition and Transcription

The marking system for SATs often leads to teachers encouraging children to insert fronted adverbials, semi-colons, adjectives and adverbs and similar features into their writing so that they can achieve higher marks. While it is laudable that children should be encouraged to make use of a range of literary devices, this approach can sometimes lead to rather stilted and formulaic prose which may tick boxes for gaining marks in a test, but would not be enjoyable to read. What is most important is that writers have a range of devices at their disposal, but know how to use them judiciously to make their text interesting and engaging for readers. Ivanič (2004) describes different approaches or discourses below.

Research Focus: Discourses of Writing and Learning to Write

Ivanič (2004) looked at different approaches to teaching and learning writing and identified a skills discourse and a creativity discourse. In the former, the emphasis is upon accuracy, while in the latter the focus is upon content and engagement of an audience.

A Skills Discourse of Writing

Underlying a great deal of policy and practice in literacy education is a fundamental belief that writing consists of applying knowledge of a set of linguistic patterns and rules for sound–symbol relationships and sentence construction. At its most extreme, this is a belief that writing is a unitary, context-free activity, in which the same patterns and rules apply to all writing, independent of text type.

In this view, what counts as good writing is determined by the correctness of the, letter, word, sentence, and text formation …

…These beliefs lead to ‘skills’ approaches to the teaching of writing, which focus on the autonomous linguistic ‘skills’ of correct handwriting, spelling, punctuation and sentence structure. A great deal of the teaching in this approach is explicit: children are taught spelling patterns and rules for grammatically correct and correctly punctuated written sentences. They undertake exercises which draw their attention to linguistic patterns and distinctions in written language, and their writing is assessed according to how accurately these patterns have been reproduced (p227).

A Creativity Discourse of Writing

The discourse of writing as the product of the author's creativity also focuses on the written text, but is concerned with its content and style rather than its linguistic form. In this discourse ‘meaning’ is central, with the writer engaged in meaning-making, and so it is concerned with mental processes as well as with characteristics of the text. Writing is treated as a valuable activity in its own right: the creative act of an author, with no social function other than that of interesting or entertaining a reader. This belief about the nature of writing generates value judgements about what counts as ‘good’ writing in terms of content and style, rather than, or in addition to, in terms of accuracy (p229).

Ivanič maintains that Experienced, eclectic teachers of writing recognise the advantage of inspiring learners to write about topics which interest them and the opportunities this provides for implicit learning, alongside explicit teaching about linguistic rules and patterns (p230).

It is, then, possible for children to develop their understanding of the transcriptional aspects of writing at the same time as they develop their compositional skills. In fact, Myhill et al. maintain:

that teaching grammar as a discrete, separate topic, where the grammar is the focus of study, is not likely to help writing development because it does not make connections between grammar and writing, or between grammar and meaning …

a writing curriculum which draws attention to the grammar of writing in an embedded and purposeful way at relevant points in the learning is a more positive way forward. In this way, young writers are introduced to what we have called ‘a repertoire of infinite possibilities’, explicitly showing them how different ways of shaping sentences or texts, and how different choices of words can generate different possibilities for meaning-making.

(2011, p3)

Myhill (2012) asserts that grammar teaching is most effective when it is taught in the context of reading and writing, either in the context of the linguistic demands of a particular genre, or the writing needs of a particular child. In the case study below you can see how a teacher begins a writing activity in a very simple way, which all children can engage with, before developing writing which involves phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs.

Case Study: Six-word Life Stories

Sadiq had enjoyed a game played at a friend's house which involved people trying to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editors
• Introduction
• 1 Writing in English
• 2 Stimulating Non-fiction Writing across the Curriculum
• 3 Writing in Mathematics
• 4 Writing in Science
• 5 Writing in Biological Science
• 6 Writing in Design and Technology
• 7 Writing in Computing
• 8 Writing in History
• 9 Writing in Music
• 10 Writing in Physical Education
• 11 Writing in Geography
• 12 Writing in Art and Design
• 13 Writing in MFL: Tina Page with Nathalie Paris from Natta-lingo
• 14 Writing in Religious Education
• 15 Writing in Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural Education
• Conclusion
• Index