Context

In January 2008, the Senior Inspector and Adviser for English in Southampton invited nine schools to take part in Everybody Writes. Southampton is a small local authority with 62 primary schools and 14 secondary schools; 39% of pupils live in areas which are among the 20% most deprived areas for child poverty in the country and the city has designated 11 areas as priority neighbourhoods1.  Standards in writing across the city are below the national average and despite attainment in writing in recent years being on an upward trajectory, the authority felt that there was more to do, so were highly motivated to become involved.  The intention was to support those schools which had the capacity to improve standards and in doing so, reduce the gap in reading and writing scores.

Like many authorities, Southampton Early Years teachers comment that many children enter school being unfamiliar with writing and for many, the first challenge is in supporting these early stages of mark making.  Observations of teaching and learning by the English Adviser and Senior Inspector highlighted that whilst there was good practice in the teaching of skills and knowledge, children did not appear to be enjoying writing.  Therefore, the key aim of Everybody Writes in Southampton was to support teachers in creating real opportunities for writing that would enable children to engage with their writing in a meaningful and purposeful way. 

Everybody Writes is a project run in partnership by Booktrust and the National Literacy Trust and funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.  Everybody Writes aims to encourage schools to explore writing beyond the classroom, taking it into the playground, the community and even the world of work.  Everybody Writes is about making writing relevant to the lives of young people and about making it fun.  The Everybody Writes ethos involves giving children something interesting to write about, and giving them real audiences for their writing.  Examples of Everybody Writes projects in schools are featured on the website, http://www.everybodywrites.org.uk , where they serve to inspire and support primary and secondary classroom teachers seeking to adopt innovative approaches to writing in schools. 

At the initial launch, teachers and teaching assistants came together to take part in creative activities which lead to discussions about attitudes to writing and the types of writing children are engaged in at school.  During the day, schools planned together to consider what writing meant for them as and how they could build on the good practice already happening within their classes.  Nine schools took the Everybody Writes framework and made it their own; some schools used their bursary to buy stationery or display materials, whilst another enlisted the expertise of a mosacist to help create an outdoor writing area. 

The notion of a legacy was key and the city was keen to empower teachers to embrace the pedagogic principles of the renewed Primary Framework for English, with embedded cross-curricular links and an emphasis on writing for a purpose.  Teachers were encouraged to take risks and to engage all staff and children in experimenting with different approaches to writing. 

The local authority perspective

“As a Primary Adviser for English in Southampton, I am always looking for ways to support teachers to engage with the challenge of developing writing in their schools. Teachers have seen many changes in the teaching of writing since 1998 and have taken some time to adopt the pedagogy of the teaching sequence for writing. The publication of Excellence and Enjoyment (2003) paved the way for teachers to deploy more motivating and engaging ways to develop writing in their classrooms. In Southampton, some teachers found it easy to plan flexibly for writing and use exciting stimuli to promote quality writing. Others found this transition more difficult and with these teachers in mind, both in central training and in individual classrooms, I continue to stress the importance of talk for writing, role-play and developing quality writing through cross-curricular projects.

So, when I heard about Everybody Writes I was keen for Southampton to be the first regional project. The way in which the nine project schools have responded to the challenge has been remarkable. After the wonderfully inspiring launch day in April, where all schools came together with the Everybody Writes team and were led in a creative writing session by the actor, Toby Jones, teachers left fired up (with the added bonus of a small bursary from the authority) and planned projects which, whilst all different, matched each school’s diverse needs. Sterling support came from Everybody Writes, which provided a really collegiate feel to the project.

I have been impressed with the teachers’ commitment, the pupils’ enthusiasm for writing and with the quality of the writing opportunities produced. In schools where teachers chose to change the physical environment, there is a legacy left for years to come; in others the legacy of approaching writing in a different way is just the starting point for more inspirational work.”  - Sue Bence, Primary English Adviser, Southampton City Council

An inspector’s view

“We identified a number of reasons for wanting to become involved in the national project, Everybody Writes, as with other authorities, we have a considerably wide gender gap in attainment in writing, which is evident at the end of the Foundation Stage and continues to be an issue through to English at Key Stage 3.  We were keen to explore with schools ways in which teachers and headteachers could raise the profile of writing into something which is both creative and rewarding, at work, at play, in the home and in the community.  By working together on a national project, and with a focus on creative and imaginative ideas for developing writing across different contexts, our intention was to build the capacity in schools to improve the quality of writing and raise standards further.
The outcomes of the project have been far reaching and we have achieved our objectives, with the overall aim for being to enable children to enjoy writing in all its varied forms. All schools have been able to demonstrate that an increase in attainment and progress and in one school this has lead to a 37% increase of Year 6 pupils achieving Level 4.  This has been a far-reaching project, with schools galvanized into action and it has been the core vehicle in supporting schools with curriculum development, the engagement of pupil voice and an engagement with personalised learning that is meaningful and relevant. 

The legacy will continue, as the schools in the project are keen to continue to develop the methods they have created to excite and encourage children to write and these schools are keen to work alongside other schools to support them in their writing projects.  We have just launched our new writing anthology, entitled Everybody Writes in Southampton, and so the legacy continues. 
Evidence of children’s excitement about, and engagement in, writing is clearly there for children, parents and teachers to see in the project schools and we are confident that this will now spread to other schools in the city. This has been a very worthwhile project.”
- Varina Emblen, Senior Inspector, Southampton City Council

The following case study highlights nine very individual projects, with lessons learned by teachers, the reactions of children and more importantly how, in Southampton, Everybody Writes.  You’ll find a brief, film version of the Southampton project, as well as examples of individual schools’ projects, at http://www.everybodywrites.org.uk/video/ .

Aims & principles

For schools to:

• audit their practice
• improve their practice
• to put the crucial factors of audience and purpose at the heart of any writing activity. 

In Practice

There’s a story throne in our playground: Oakwood Junior School

Oakwood Junior School was already taking a creative approach to writing, with Year 4 engaged in Dragon’s Den-type activities linking English, design/technology and science.  Despite sophisticated plans, annotations and clearly labelled diagrams, Year 4 were at great pains to stress that they weren’t actually doing any ‘writing’.  The school took the opportunity to link their Everybody Writes project with the re-development an undeveloped area of the school grounds. 

Maria Whitmarsh, the Year 4 class teacher, invited a mosaicist and a specialist wood carving company to help with the practical aspects of the garden whilst the children set to work describing the playground, (‘it’s dull and empty’ and ‘there’s nothing there’) and planning what kind of space it could be.  Links were made with the BBC project Quiet Spaces, with a list of possibilities for using the space – as an outside classroom, for drama and hot-seating, reading under the tree and role play.  The specialist wood carving company suggested creating a story throne and this proved to be the biggest inspiration.  As the writing opportunities developed, children created survival guides for a wood louse, made links with learning about habitats and created poetry inspired by the garden, as well as contributing to a class blog, detailing the journey of the project. 

Although an ambitious project, its success was due in part to the fact that it built on work already happening in school and was seen as an opportunity rather than an add-on. There were challenges and these focused on the organisation and timing of outside visitors, as well as being beholden to the British weather. 
The new outdoor writing area was opened to the school on Everybody Writes Day, with parents listening to, and sharing their children’s writing. The lasting legacy of this project is in the inspirational outdoor writing area complete with story throne and stepping-stones, as well as a commitment, within the school, to give children real reasons for writing. 

“In some ways, the project has evolved as I was carried along by the project; it’s led me rather than me leading it.” - Maria Whitmarsh, class teacher

Everybody Writes, don’t they?  Weston Park Junior School

Like many other schools, Weston Park Junior School faces concerns with engagement in writing that go beyond school, as the local community often perceive it as something quite threatening. Despite the school’s best efforts, everything they had been doing to increase literacy in a traditional sense was not having enough of an impact, so the school looked to their Everybody Writes project as fuelling engagement and excitement about writing.

The school’s mantra of “making the ordinary extraordinary” led to and a letter-writing project that was relatively simple to organise, as well practising an important life skill.  Every child in the school thought of a job that they wanted to do when they were older and wrote a letter to someone who did that job.  Occupations ranged from the obvious, footballers and basketball players to the unexpected, a paramedic, a veterinarian and even a competition fisherman.  During the day the teachers modelled letter writing and the focus was on how people use writing in their everyday lives. 
The children made use of the Internet and local telephone pages to find the names and addresses and duly posted their letters. 

For many of the children the end of the day was the end of the project, but for staff this was the beginning with discussions on how purposeful the project had and how engaged the children had been in what they had been doing.  Staff were also surprised by who the children chose to write to as well as learning more about their children, one teacher remarked, “I had no idea that they even liked fishing.”

Within weeks letters started arriving at school and the school made the decision to read out every child’s name and to hand out their letters in assembly.  For many of the children writing a letter had been a new experience and to receive one back was so exciting.  Many of the letters answered all the children’s queries, and some received invitations to visit the workplace and others, like the paramedics offered to visit and appeared genuinely delighted that a child had taken the time to write a letter. 

“It was amazing as the letters came back to school and again it was a case of making the ordinary extraordinary, with letters being handed out in assembly. Children ran up the corridor to show people what had come in their letter, whether it was a sticker that the man in the angling club had included, or whether it was a handwritten long letter from an electrician who wrote how amazed he was that a child had written to him!  The letters said things like “your handwriting is beautiful” or “your letter really made me think” – all these compliments came through and impacted our children’s sense of self-esteem.”

Two very different letters stick in the mind of the Deputy Headteacher, Emma Kerrigan-Draper. Firstly, the letter from a famous comedian who had taken the trouble to respond in a two-page handwritten letter, answering every question and even crossing out a mistake, much to the delight of staff.  The second letter was written by a disaffected Year 6 who decided to write to a local carpenter. When he received his reply he was delighted and staff felt that this was very powerful in itself.  The carpenter then went on to describe how he used writing in his daily life and gave real and relevant reasons for needing to be able write, such as needing to write invoices in order to get paid.  Small shifts in attitudes can change a culture and this one letter made a powerful difference to one pupil’s perceptions. 

“I would say to someone who hasn’t done this before – start small. Our idea involved a piece of paper, an envelope and a stamp, and a bit of foot-power to get the post-box!  It was a small and simple idea but the impact was quite powerful.  And for those who received our letters?  Maybe it wasn’t just the impact on self-esteem within the school – maybe the people we wrote to ended up feeling quite special themselves.” - Emma Kerrigan-Draper, Deputy Headteacher

Eco-Week and writing: St Denys Primary School

Having attended the launch day to find out more about Everybody Writes, classteacher, Gayle Usher was inspired to run an Everybody Writes Day, but she wanted to find ways of involving all staff.  As with many schools, writing attainment is a priority, and the aim of this project was to encourage staff to take a more creative approach to writing and to consider the kinds of writing opportunities they could plan.  As the school already had an Eco-Week planned, St Denys decided to link their Everybody Writes project with the aim of promoting writing ‘as fun’.  One morning in Eco-Week was devoted to all forms of writing, with children in Year 4 involved in writing campaign speeches for the environmental campaigner, Michael Recycle, and KS1 children writing with, and about, rubbish.  The celebration assembly at the end of the day allowed all staff and children to share the work that had gone on across the school.  One teacher noted, ‘all the children were so excited and motivated’ and all staff were especially struck with the comment by one child, ‘Miss, I’ve loved writing and normally I hate it.’

Engaging our community: St Mark’s CE Junior School

St Mark’s CE Junior School’s aim was to build on the school’s commitment to engaging the local community.  For English Subject Leader, Rajani Arora, the starting point was a local community festival where visitors were asked to write one word to describe their local community.  Words included:  happiness, security and friendship.  Each year group then took a different theme under the heading, ‘My place, my community, my city’ to celebrate Everybody Writes Day.  With over 320 pupils and over 30 different languages being spoken, it was important that the project reflected the diversity of the school.  Themes included the international dimension, different people/different countries, school grounds and special events.  Throughout the day there was a buzz around writing and the children enjoyed doing something different whilst working as a whole school.

The burial of a time capsule gave a focus to the day and a Parent Governor noted, ‘children loved the whole experience.’  For Rajani, the project’s legacy is to further develop richness in writing, by giving children choice and greater independence in their writing experiences. 

Re-discovering our school’s history: Bitterne Park Junior School

Bitterne Park Junior School hosted a very successful Everybody Writes Day in 2007, which children still talked about with enthusiasm, and so the school were keen to build on this success but were looking for a different focus.  Inspired by School Story, an Everybody Writes project based on school stories, Year 6 teacher and AST Heather Beattie began investigating her school’s past.  In doing so, she uncovered a treasure trove of school records including school magazines from the 1950s and the Headmaster’s journal. In finding out more about their school, pupils discovered their own history, including the fact that pupils from the school had been evacuated just 3 days after it re-opened in 1939.  This sense of discovered history allowed pupils to find a connection with their own school and their Everybody Writes Day was dedicated to looking back over the last 50 years.

All children and adults came to school dressed up in the clothes of their chosen decades and a host of visitors were invited in to tell stories from their school days.  Pupils hot-seated ex-teachers and ex-pupils to learn the secrets from 1965 - 2000 and enjoyed tasting 1970s sweets including flying saucers and fruit salads, and wrote captions to describe them.  Other pupils wrote Back to the Future play-scripts, some children created a school guide showing visitors the changes to the school, whilst an 80 year-old ex-pupil helped pupils unravel the secrets of a mysterious box dated somewhere between 1945 - 1965. 

The highlight of the assembly was when the youngest and oldest pupils in the school unrolled a time-line of the school drawing gasps of surprise.  Over the course of the year, children will share their school stories and produce their own School Story, which will take the form of a book with children’s published writing.

“One story that will make it into the book is of the Year 6 boy who took an enormous amount of pride in bringing in a photograph of his great, great grandfather who attended the school 100 years ago.  It was experiences like these that added to the buzz within the school that created a busy but focused atmosphere, allowing children to mesh the experience of writing with the real experience of our school’s history.” - Heather Beattie, Year 6 class teacher

The deck of the Titanic: Sinclair Primary School and Nursery

The response of Headteacher Debbie Adamson when considering what her children thought about writing was, ‘oh my goodness, not writing!’.  This was based on school data that suggested a 41% difference in reading and writing scores but unlike the national picture, no evidence of a gender divide.  The school decided to use the opportunity of an Everybody Writes project to re-invigorate the school curriculum in order to ensure that enthusiasm and a purpose for writing are at the heart. 

During a staff meeting, staff used the Everybody Writes school audit to consider the school’s strengths and to target ways that would improve attitudes to writing.  Staff identified that the writing children always enjoyed was when they were learning about the Titanic or another ship, The Victory.  As the Titanic is a part of the city’s history and children were motivated a Titanic project was decided on.  Over the summer holidays a wide corridor and storage cupboard were transformed into the deck of the Titanic, complete with the Captain’s writing cabin. 

On returning to school, children were thrilled with the makeover and keen to find out more about the plans for the deck.  One unexpected outcome was the involvement of the local community who were keen to become involved and began to offer artifacts, replica models and photographs.  Over the course of the coming year, the school has planned two playwriting initiatives: one based on the film ‘A Night to Remember’, the fateful last night and the other based on the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film.  This aspect of the project aims to build on existing links with the local secondary school to help the children with the staging of drama and playwriting activities. 
Everybody Writes Day in October provided the ideal opportunity to officially launch the project and invited guests enjoyed a guided tour of the Titanic.  The deck will prove to not only be a permanent legacy but will also serve as a focus for the school’s on-going work in engaging children with real reasons for writing.  Staff have been buoyed and encouraged by the most recent school data which suggests a 37% increase in Year 6 pupils achieving Level 4 in writing.  The Headteacher is not surprised, she feels that this has been due to teachers taking the time to audit their practice, improve their practice and that inevitably results will rise and that Sinclair are well on the way to becoming a writing school. 

Key Stage 1 children write, too: Valentine Infant School

Valentine Infant School had they been working very hard on extending their able writers’ experience of writing in different genres.  In order to engage all children, it was decided that the Everybody Writes project would be centred on producing the school’s first newsletter written by pupils.  The children were very excited and began to think about what their class would include:  Year R wrote about starting school, Year 1 focused on animals and Year 2 concentrated on general knowledge.  Staff were keen to stress that the project would involve a real audience for writing and for the children to experience the whole of the writing process from drafting, editing and evaluating their newsletters.  The aim was for the children to not only take responsibility for the content of the newsletters, but also to sell them, deal with the money and to decide what the money raised would buy for the class.  The school had hoped to sell the newsletters at the Summer Fayre, but due to the weather this could not happen and so the newsletters were sold from class.  The school did have some luck however, as the company fitting the new photocopiers offered to pay for the colour photocopying, leading to a quality product that the children were rightly proud of. 

Everybody Writes Day: Holy Family RC Primary School

With a number of new staff, Holy Family decided to host the school’s first Everybody Writes Day just before the autumn half-term and it proved to be the ideal opportunity to bring teachers together to share their ideas and interests. Lead teacher, Victoria George encouraged staff to suspend the curriculum and the children spent the day engaged in a wide range of writing activities.  Children discovered the mysteries of invisible writing and one Year 3 pupil remarked, ‘I didn’t know you could write is so many different ways.’  Others were engaged in writing riddles in toilet roll, writing messages in bottles and some even discovered that you can write with toothpaste, coal, string, as well as the more traditional pencil.  At the end of the day, all the work was shared and celebrated, with one wall of the Headteacher’s office being used to display the highlights from each activity.  The quote of the day came from a child who had enjoyed kidnapping the Year 5 teacher’s personal belongings, ‘I’ve never written a ransom letter before’, and it was felt that this was probably a good thing. What the children of Holy Family realised was that ‘writing doesn’t have to be a chore’.

Writing as an art form: Redbridge Primary School

The staff at Redbridge Primary School knew that their children loved art but that they did not like writing. Lead teacher, Chris Proctor suggested to staff that they link their Everybody Writes project to one day of their planned Arts Week, and in doing so to try and bring the children’s enthusiasm for art to exciting writing opportunities.  However, as teachers started to suggest ideas, the one day of writing became a whole week of art and writing. The aim was for children to re-discover the joy of the physical act of writing by using a range of different media: writing in chalk, in paint, they fashioned words in trees and found innovative ways of creating art from words.  Children chose their favourite words and displayed these on hands and on benches, which then became the focus of an outdoor writing area.

This outdoor writing area transformed an overgrown area of the playground, through the whole school working together, a space to sit and talk and reflect has been created.  The children took this one step further by writing letters to local businesses who then generously donated benches to finish off the new outdoor classroom, leading to children commenting, “It’s really nice and special.”
A blog was set up to track the journey of the project and teachers, parents and children were invited to join in with one teacher reflecting, “We, as a staff, were all writing.”  What was important for the children was that they enjoyed what they were doing and whilst everyone in the class was writing, to the children it didn’t seem like writing.  This was a key point for the school as they felt that the Everybody Writes project had given children choice and a purpose for writing.  As well as a permanent writing area, the school feels that the impact of the project is far longer term, as teachers are continuing to look at writing opportunities across the curriculum and for ways to keep the purpose and audience for writing firmly on the agenda.  The school continues to plan in writing activities and special writing days that serve as a reminder of how the school has moved on as a writing school as well as being committed to providing opportunities for writing that engage and motivate the children of Redbridge.

Partnerships

Drawing on the experience and expertise of a number of teachers in Southampton, including Advanced Skills Teachers, Leading Literacy Teachers and those who were part of previous writing projects, a working party of teachers, local authority advisers and Everybody Writes came together to plan a writing project for Southampton.  A small bursary of £300 was offered to schools, enabling them to use the money to purchase resources they felt would enhance their individual writing priorities for the year.

Outcomes

As the lead teachers came together in December for the launch of the Southampton Everybody Writes film, it became clear that in many ways this project had gone way beyond its original expectations.  The idea of legacy had become a key feature of each of the projects with each school interpreting this differently.  For some, it was changing the physical environment through the creation of a permanent writing area, with children enjoying writing activities during playtimes and lunchtimes, whilst In other schools, children’s aspirations have been raised with a shift in attitude towards writing of both children and staff, leading to a realisation that writing goes beyond ‘school writing’ and into the world of work. However, the common theme for all the schools was that staff had been engaged with conversations about writing and by focusing on effective writing strategies there would be long-term benefits for attainment and engagement beyond the life of their project.   

The impact of the project has meant different things to the nine very different schools. In some schools it has lead to a rapid improvement in writing attainment, which in part can be directly attributed to Everybody Writes. Involvement in the project has also lead to discussions around writing. It was this need to develop a shared understanding of the writing that was exemplified by Year 4 pupils at Oakwood School who apologised for not doing any ‘writing’, when they had clearly been using effective writing skills in the planning and designing of their bird boxes.  There was a realisation from many of the teachers that they, and children, were viewing writing as an output rather than as a process and so a focus for some schools has been on finding alternative ways of recording, through film clips, podcasts, or by working collaboratively on play scripts. 

One of the successes of the project has been the opportunity for the Everybody Writes schools to work of as a cluster and the sharing of the experience has been extremely valuable.  The existing schools have been keen to share their projects through panel meetings and a recent English Co-ordinators conference.  Such has been the success of this aspect of the project, that four teachers have been invited to become Everybody Writes Ambassadors who will take on a key role in Southampton’s wish for the future by encouraging all to hold an Everybody Writes project within in the next academic year. 

---

Comments on Everybody Writes in Southampton

Be the first to comment on this project