Via @lit4pleasure: Why the use of writing stimuli & class book topics are damaging children’s writing potential

We begin with some wise words from Donald Graves, writer, teacher, researcher and thinker:

‘Children want to write’.

In this post I want to suggest that the provision by teachers of cross-curricular ‘topics’ or ‘writing stimuli’ for writing in school is often inhibiting the desire to write, which therefore affects the quality of the writing. Luckily, there is another way of offering topic choice which can redress this sad state of affairs.

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If you agree with Donald Graves’ assertion, the question you will ask yourself is: what do children want to write? It is our belief that all children have experiences and interests in their own lives which they can bring to writing, and that teachers should make it possible for them to do so. An incident, a person, a preoccupation, an opinion, a question, a memory, a curiosity, a story – all these are personal resources available for children to draw on as valuable and valid subjects for writing in school. Yet in the typical writing pedagogy, the choice of topic is almost always chosen by the teacher. Children are often subjected to external ‘stimuli’ such as:

• Video or films
• Whole-class literature study,
• Talk-For-Writing -read our article about Talk For Writing here,
• Pictures or excerpts from non-fiction texts.

Children are then expected to respond. In this way, their own desires are not realised. They learn they are only ever to be consumers of writing as opposed to authentic producers. Maybe this is why The Literacy Trust has recently stated that children’s attitudes towards writing is worsening and that fewer children are writing at home or for pleasure. It’s well known that even very young children will ‘write’ spontaneously and readily about things which have made an impression on them in their daily lives. So how and why is it that teachers feel they must be responsible for providing older children with a stimulus in which to write (inauthentically)?

Writing tasks set by the teacher are very often derived from the foundation subjects such as history or geography, and are thus termed ‘cross-curricular’ topics. There is probably no rationale for this beyond simply providing children with a subject on which to hang practising writing in a particular genre – in effect, a form of writing exercise. It is possible that teachers may see cross-curricular writing as an opportunity for children to show their understanding of a geographical location or an historical event(s). Maybe they see it as an opportunity for pupils to express a feeling of empathy for a character caught up in a particular moment in history, or simply a way to cram extra foundation subject work into the timetable. Unfortunately though, as a teacher who specialised in History & Geography before gaining an MA in Education with Linguistics,  these lessons produce neither a decent historical/geographical piece of writing nor a good literary one. This is because children are effectively being asked to make an imaginative leap into someone else’s psyche or produce writing on the basis of new and very limited knowledge. On top of this they also have to negotiate this new found knowledge further through literary requirements such as noun phrases, embedded clauses, the passive voice and fronted adverbials. Now, a few children will occasionally be inspired by these topics; fewer will be able to produce a satisfying piece of writing. The reality is that all too often you receive a collection of stilted, inauthentic and depressingly similar pieces.

The question we are asking is why we require pupils to jump through these hoops when we could be inviting them to write about what they are expert in, authentically, with engagement and interest, for a purpose and audience of their own choosing and in a (learned) genre which suits their intention- in short, what they are capable of doing from their own centre.

A Facebook post from a reader of this post said:

I agree with many points in this article, but what about those children that cannot think of anything to write about? The ones that do nothing on the weekend except watch TV or play on the computer? The ones that have very little life experience to bring to the table? Often the anxiety of having to generate ideas is the hardest part of writing for these children. Sometimes a teacher directed task or stimulus is the right thing to do for some of our children. It can’t be a one size fits all, need to differentiate!

Whilst reading our article, you may have been wondering the same thing. What could self-directed subject choice look like practically? Would it work in a real classroom?

Well, a colleague and I have been working for some time on producing a new pedagogy for writing in the primary school which begins with children making their own choice of subject. You can read about it here.

We must stress at this point that we are in no way advocating the withdrawal of the teacher’s assistance when children are choosing a theme. There are many ways of supporting children to generate their own ideas, in the form of:

• Idea hearts or idea maps,
• Asking themselves ‘What if..?’ questions
• Generating ‘When I was little…’ statements
• ‘What makes me angry, scared, upset, happy’ lists, 
• Deciding to use ideas from the books they have chosen and read,
• Deciding for themselves to use the topic(s) they are studying/ have studied in foundation subjects.

Such scaffolding is available at every stage of the writing process we describe.

We regularly read children Michael Rosen poems. He takes the most boring and ordinary life events and makes them extraordinary. We get them to go home and write a list of ‘poems hide in‘ statements – this is where they run around their house and write down things that they could write poems about. Finally, with some of our most inexperienced writers, we ask them to bring artefacts in from home which they could write about. We ask them to draw pictures that they could then write about. No child is a floating blob in time and space – they all have experiences, passions and treasured objects – we just need to make them feel they are legitimate and that we want to hear about them in fun and creative ways!

We appreciate that this shift from imposing tasks and themes for writing to allowing children to write about what they would like is an ideologically profound one – and you can read more about that here.Teachers find it difficult to relinquish apparent control and pass the responsibility to their pupils (a question of trust). They fear that children’s self-chosen themes will be superficial or trivial (again, a lack of trust).They may make the assumption that the resultant writing will not have the same ‘quality’ as a piece whose theme is secured by them. To allay these fears, I would ask them to consider the following observations made at the coal-face:

In our experience, children’s freedom to write about what interests and motivates them, what has amused or struck them, what they care about, love or hate, carries many benefits. Assisting a child with a theme is not the same as imposing a topic for children to write about. Imposing writing topics upon children is an act of linguistic oppression which shouldn’t be underesitmated. We believe that quality writing cannot emerge without an underlying authentic intention. That is not to say that in some circumstances there may be an adequate reason for requiring children to write to a given theme, to explore an issue in a particular subject area, for example. But if our aim is to help a child learn to write then we have to accept that the consequence of  selected themes being forced upon children is to make their writing less probable or profitable. It very often becomes an imposition and does not help children to become  real writers – just writers of writing exercises.

The children in our class, however, genuinely love making their own choice of topic. They have said so many times. They are intent on writing. Many have now acquired their very own notebooks in which they jot down ideas and try out pieces – often at home, at playtimes or in their free-time.

We believe the most direct and relevant way for a teacher to demonstrate to a pupil the power of writing is to write with them and give them the opporunity to write what is motivating to them. You can read about how we do this through Pupil Conferencing, here.

They come to understand all the functions of writing – to share and communicate, explore issues, explain or persuade, entertain and inform, get through a hard time, re-live a good time or work out a problem. They begin to write like real writers, readily sharing their work with their peers and giving and accepting helpful criticism. Not all topics will prove to be what Graves calls ‘hot topics’. But children will be practising the craft of writing until their hot topic comes along. They will learn that they are producers of content, not simply there to rehash or consume other people’s writing ideas and desires. You can read about why this is so important here.

As teachers we positively look forward to reading such a wide variety of writing pieces. And feel excitement and motivation ourselves.

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