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Developing Writing, Speaking And Listening Skills in Primary Schools

James Carter

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136767838
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

An exciting and creative approaches that links literacy and oracy in a way that children will enjoy. Performing poetry is also proven to boost self-esteem.

Includes:

* Audio downloadable resources with recordings of published poets and children performing their own work

* Activities to develop speaking and listening skills

* Model poems from which to work

* Guidelines for progressing through the writing and performance process

* A three stage model: preparation -- writing -- performing

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Developing writing skills through poetry

The Writing Process and Poetry Writing Workshop Structure

Poetry workshops – or any other form of writing workshops – need to follow a coherent structure to enable the mind to create effectively, to give children time to mull over ideas, to share ideas and for the resulting material to fully grow and develop. Here is one such structure that can easily be adapted or modified:

• Thinking time: being given a short while to consider the topic/focus/stimuli. Children need to work in such a way that encourages creative thinking – not actively and consciously wondering ‘What shall I write? What can my poem be about?, but more a kind of daydreaming state where the mind wanders and wonders, can be creative and play with potential ideas for writing.

As Ted Hughes advocates in his seminal book Poetry in the Making, it is essential not to rush into writing a poem. Hughes says that time spent thinking, pondering and mentally exploring is vital – and integral to the creative process. To commit an idea to paper too early can quash an idea before it is fully realised.

• Talking time: time to talk, discuss, to listen to and to share ideas either as a whole class or in small groups – which can also be part of:

• Brainstorming time: listing all ideas – everything that comes to mind. At this point it is vital to emphasise that all ideas are worth putting down, as you cannot tell which ones will be used at a later stage. Teachers can act as scribe for some of the children’s ideas, but children can produce their own brainstorms as well prior to writing. Children can also share and discuss their ideas with a partner.

• Writing time: this can happen at various stages – from the first draft, to further revisions and edits on to the final draft.

• Sharing time: time to read out and share with the class, for others to comment and feed back and for children to reflect upon their own poems – saying how effective they feel the poem is and what aspects may need further work.

These stages can be recursive. Having written a poem, a child can read out a first draft, share comments from others, and go back to more writing – and so it goes on.

Children will create in different ways. They need to be able to discover how they function best with writing, and be able to explore their own creative process – and understand how they function best as a writer. The older and more confident children become with their writing, the more they need to be given scope to follow their own creative paths in workshops. To show how one set workshop can lead off into various directions, there are three very different children’s poems included in this book that all stem from the same workshop. These are ‘Owls’ (p. 31), ‘Twinkling Twilight’ (p. 30) and ‘Magic in the Moonlight – a Midnight Mystery’ (p. 127) (track 7 on CD).

Confidence with Writing Poetry

There’s that old saying that we have all got a book within us. Is it true? Maybe it is. But one thing for sure is that everyone is capable of writing at least a handful of really fine poems. It’s all a question of nurturing the skills, instilling a love and respect for language; but above all, it is a matter of developing confidence.

Confidence comes from being given regular opportunities to write creatively – from our imaginations as well as from our own experiences. As the novelist/poet Berlie Doherty says, ‘Writing is the combination of I remember and Let’s pretend.’ Confidence in writing is when children are feeling positive about exploring their ideas, and feeling comfortable enough to write down any thoughts, words or images that come to them as they are brainstorming. As a writer you never know what ideas you are going to use at a later stage, so you have to be prepared to write down literally anything that comes to mind. In the classrom this can only be achieved if (a) children have no inhibitions, and (b) they are concentrating on the creative rather than the formal aspects of writing (handwriting, spelling, punctuation and grammar), which can be properly addressed at a later editing stage. Above all, children’s confidence comes from feeling that their ideas and their writing are of value and that they as writers are respected by the classroom teacher – which can further be achieved by having their work regularly published.

Confidence can also come as a result of having positive feedback to writing. The poet Brian Moses has a most effective way of encouraging children to develop their poems. In a workshop, when a child reads out, Brian will first listen and then respond with a compliment – something like, ‘You have a great title/opening line there’ and then he will make a suggestion for improvement; perhaps, ‘but the rhythm of the second line doesn’t quite flow yet. Could you shorten that line?’ And it is always good to ask a child what they think about your response: ‘Do you agree?’ ‘What do you think?’

For children to become confident and competent language-users, they need to be able to express themselves in their own voices (see ‘Free Verse’ section). As noted earlier, poetry is perhaps the best medium for children to write about their worlds, their memories, their life experiences, their families and friendships, things that matter to them and everything around them. Children need to be given experience of using a range of poetic forms so that ultimately they can choose the most appropriate mode of expression – be it a rhyming piece, a free verse poem, a kenning or a list poem, or whatever. We need to build up children’s poetic repertoires so that they have the ability to select the medium/mode that best befits want they want to say. And within the various forms, children can use their own voices, dialects and language particular to their home, culture and religion. Just because they are writing poetry doesn’t mean that everything has to be figurative or metaphoric. The voice can be contemporary and colloquial.

Children need to be aware that every idea is good in the right place. When brainstoming ideas or writing a first draft, children need to be reassured that there is no such thing as a bad or wrong idea. Every idea is good (a) in the appropriate place, and (b) with work. But it can take time to decide which ideas to use and how to develop them (see Crafting and Drafting photocopy sheet on p. 84). When conducting workshops, the educationalist/author Steve Bowkett, on hearing a child give an idea that cannot be used directly in the evolving piece of writing on the board, will tell the child that s/he has a ‘little treasure’ to put in their pocket to bring out later when they are doing their own piece of writing. What a wonderfully reassuring thing to say!

In workshops, children frequently ask such questions as, ‘Is this right?’ or ‘Am I allowed to do this …?’ as if poetry – like grammar or punctuation – has a strict, rigid set of rules and regulations. Children need to be told regularly that they are in charge of their poems, that it is not a case of right and wrong – but writing is something that they should enjoy, something to be pleased with.

As fanciful as it may sound, poetry is, in a number of ways, like jazz. Of all the written language forms, poetry is the most playful, adventurous, experimental, subversive and, of course, rhythmical and melodic. Children need to experience all of these qualities that poetry can have. Children need to discover in their own writing the playfulness of words and feel confident enough ...