Everybody Writes Blog
Welcome to the Everybody Writes weblog, where Anna Loudon, our Project Manager, keeps you up to date with what we’ve been doing and thinking recently.
Writing outside the classroom
Step...jump!
Writing about local wildlife
Simple and effective: painting words on a spiral of stones
Saturating the landcsape with language
St Mary’s School in Gillingham, Dorset, have just emailed me about their recent “Writing outdoors” project which was specifically aimed at engaging boys in writing. Here’s what Donna Knibbs, the teacher, sent me:
Aims for the project:
Raise the profile of writing in the school
To engage boys with a “boy-friendly” topic and using the outdoors
For writing to be given a higher profile; prior to, during and after the event by pupils, teachers, parents and all stakeholders
For the whole school to share a buzz about writing by enjoying an amazing, fun, writing day that will be remembered
Use the school grounds to inspire children to write and embrace real life writing
The Plan!
A creative writing project, using the different areas of the school grounds.
Children to complete writing activities, inspired by the area of the grounds chosen by the teacher.
Complete creative, descriptive writing games about the area using senses etc (use Pie Corbett Book - Jumpstart) activities. Create and enjoy:
- Writing lines of description
- Use your senses to describe the area
- Describe and write using words to describe what you would do in the area
- Hang, pin or staple the words and description in the area.
- Can you hang/pin the writing into a shape?
- Creative word play and description about the area to generate and write words.
- Be creative with what the children write with and write on………no pencils or white paper!!!!!!!
- It does not have to be permanent but it would be great if it could!!!!!
End of the day celebration with staff and families. Families will be invited to the school at 2.45 to walk around the grounds to see all the writing.
Areas of the grounds:
• Story telling area
• Play trail
• Pond
• Train
• Beach garden
• Willow
• Bandstand
• Orchard/wild meadow
• Maze
• Butterfly garden
• Class gardens
• Early years area
• Mound
• Sports field
Stockport writing
Brookside Primary School's nature meadow writing
Gatley Primary School
Moss Hey TV hits town
Norbury Hall Primary School's fantastic writing
Torkington Primary's Word Monster inspired lots of enthusiastic writing
Writing from Queens Road Primary School
Teachers share the writing from their schools
More writing from Moss Hey Primary School - beatuifully displayed
Make your own books! Brookside Primary School did
The Iron Man Cometh... Writing from Nevil Road Primary School
Prospect Vale School produced some great online magazines and video interviews
Writing from Norris Bank Primary's SEAL project "It's Good to be Me"
Kennings on T shirts. We love it!
I’ve just received some fantastic photos from Veronica Thomas at Stockport Local Authority featuring writing displays from their recent LA wide Everybody Writes Celebration Day. Teachers could share practice and look at what other schools had produced, and the LA also produced a high quality magazine featuring a summary of each school’s project - a great example of documenting your project.
Celebration events like this one are a great opportunity to get other schools interested in Everybody Writes; from an LA point of view it’s a great time to invite the next phase of schools to be involved in the projects - showcase the excellent models of writing that have come out of the first set of schools and enable those teachers to act as Writing Ambassadors to inspire and guide colleagues in other schools.
Everybody Writes in Newham
Malika Booker inspired teachers with her poetry activities
I was in East London last week launching Everybody Writes with 12 Newham schools, with inspirational help from poet Malika Booker. In the morning, Malika introduced teachers to the free writing technique to inspire ideas and get words down on paper quickly and effectively, as well as introducing teachers to the villanelle form of poetry. We worked in groups to explore using the senses and applying them to emotions: our group had to come up with a series of images for what terror might smell, sound and taste like.
The primary teachers were really enthused and brainstormed lots of writing ideas to run back in their schools, including using artefact boxes to inspire writing with links to history, writing about a new school site and making National Poetry Day a writing day every year. The projects will run in Autumn of this year and will hopefully be featured on our website for you to read about shortly after that.
Everybody Writes in Dorset
Brian Moses performed poems about iguanas, bullies and snakes in hotels
This week I was in Dorset at the annual Sharing Good Practice in English conference run by Dorset Local Authority, with 70 primary and secondary teachers, keeping them up to date with what we’ve been up to with Everybody Writes. It was a great day and I met lots of enthusiastic teachers who hopefully came away from the day brimming with ideas for their own writing projects - school books, termly Everybody Writes Days and writing about football were all discussed (though, sadly on my part, without any knowledge about the finer points of the beautiful game). One teacher suggested that she could ask her pupils to define the offside rule in writing in as succinct a way as possible…I’d be interested to learn what the definition actually is.
Poets Tony Mitton and Brian Moses also talked to the teachers about writing for children, engaging pupils in poetry and making poetry and stories appeal to boys in particular - Brian’s performance showed his enthusiasm and skills with percussion and noisy instruments, combining sound, rhythm and volume to create mood in the performance of his poems (“Snake Hotel” made more than one of us jump….me included). Tony read a variety of poems from his books Plum and Down by the Cool of the Pool.
It was really great to be involved in sharing good practice in such a vibrant and creative local authority and with so many committed and fun loving teachers.
Waiting, wobbly and willing writers
Seven Stories: The Centre for Children's Books in Newcastle, the venue for our second teacher workshop of the week
It’s been go, go, go this week with Enthusiast workshops in London and Newcastle. We started the week with a theatre-inspired writing workshop with Toby Jones at the awesomely cool and artistic Wallacespace in Covent Garden. Toby has been a strong supporter of Everybody Writes since the inception of the project and has helped us to inspire teachers in workshops as well as providing some lovely writing games for the website. He voiced Dobby the house-elf in the Harry Potter films and in 2006 he portrayed Truman Capote in the biopic Infamous. In 2008, Jones portrayed Karl Rove in Oliver Stone’s W. and appeared as Hollywood agent Swifty Lazar in Frost/Nixon. In 2009 he appeared in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the National Theatre and Parlour Song at the Almeida Theatre. He also appeared in Doctor Who in May this year as the ‘Dream Lord’. This week Toby started teachers with a drama warm-up then concentrated on creating stories inspired by photographs.
Our Creative Consultant Sasha Hoare was also with us and ran a fantastic film workshop in the afternoon for some of the group which they showed to us at the end of the day. The film nestled snugly within a blog they’d set up for the afternoon too. Very impressive - and blogs are a great way to share your pupils’ writing.
On Thursday at Seven Stories in Newcastle our North East teachers were delighted to spend some creative time with stand up comedian, poet, Slam winner and journalist Kate Fox in the morning of their workshop day. In the course of the morning the group produced a great deal of creative output, one part of which was a communal “tweet” poem: each person writing just a couple of lines describing what they were thinking and feeling at that moment. I am delighted to share it with you here:
No dust in this attic, seven stories up;
Lopsided sofas, books in the rafters,
Stained glass panels backlit by sun,
Us – waiting, wobbly but willing.
Sun shining through an airy attic,
Unheard of: pastries to start!
They let teachers have these?
School day, no kids.
Big space, full of strangers
Colour and light
Pressure, poetry, performance,
Anticipation: what’s to come?
Minds whirring, words buzzing,
Poems starting in the attic.
Nervous giggles as minds crack open,
Laid bare for all to see.
Out for the day in Newcastle -
Catching a commuter train,
Vanilla latte, not staffroom tea
and a shared tea bag.
Silent attic, solid beams
Concentration abounds
Streaming sunlight, relaxation.
Help! I can hear children!
Not at all wobbly, I think you’ll agree!
