Context

Magically-costumed pupils read each other’s work and spell-scrolls hang from the ceiling

Redbridge Primary School is a small inner city school in Southampton with a one-form entry that has 200 pupils aged 4-11. It has approximately 35 per cent SEN and very few EAL children. It is built next to a busy dual carriageway, and most of the classrooms are temporary buildings which are now falling into a state of disrepair. Because of this, the school has recently developed an outdoor writing space as part of a previous Everybody Writes project.  The project that follows builds on the variety of Everybody Writes activities that this school has undertaken in the past year.

As Everybody Writes Day fell at the end of October, the school decided to build in some fancy dress and fun elements to the day, making a thematic link with magic, a popular subject that they felt most children would be interested in.

Planning was done quickly with lots of informal chats and sharing of ideas, but with no staff meeting time. All teachers participated in the day but planning was done on a class-by-class basis with but lots of ideas being shared and adapted for different age groups.

Aims & principles

The primary aim of Magical Writing Day was to have fun with writing. It was felt that the pressure to improve writing within the school had contributed to a slightly negative view of writing, felt by both pupils and staff. Teachers had found from a pupil questionnaire that pupil attitudes towards writing were quite negative. The school therefore wanted the day to be focused on the enjoyment of writing to address this.

Harry Potter, a dragon and a princess write magic spells

Summary

Children and all staff (teachers, teaching assistants, office staff, Headteacher, governors, ex-teaching staff) were encouraged to dress up as a magical character to add extra excitement to the day. Teachers decorated their classrooms with magical themes. The day started with a magical assembly where magic spells were performed and mysterious magical wands waved.

Classes enjoyed a range of writing activities throughout the day, including:

• Writing rhyming magic spells (poetry)
• Inventing magical creatures and describing them in writing (creative non-fiction)
• Invisible writing - using different techniques to conceal and reveal the written word (experimenting with different writing implements and surfaces)
• Spooky sentences (playing with language to develop mood; focused and concise writing)
• Writing a CV for a Magician’s Assistant (creative non-fiction)
• Making magic wands with words and spells exploding from the tips (working across art forms)

Some of the classes worked together, with older children supporting younger children, and other classes met at the end of the day to share what they had done in an assembly. A selection of work was collected from every class and displayed in the school hall for everyone to enjoy.

“I thought that it was going to be boring, because it was just writing, but it’s been really exciting!” - Year 6 pupil

Writing witches’ potions recipes

Outcomes

“The Everybody Writes Days are really helping to change attitudes to writing within our school. We are now planning to have a special writing day each term, and are already thinking about a special day within book week, where we become authors for the day and write a 50 word story, which is then made into a school book. And later in the year, we plan to link our writing with DT, designing a new invention and presenting it to a panel in the style of Dragons’ Den.” - Class teacher
 
The school weblog has assisted greatly in keeping a record of everything they have done to date, and continues to be regularly updated with details of other writing events throughout the year.

Teachers anticipate that the building of the new school next year will offer them many more opportunities to stimulate writing, and they intend that their new school will be a writing school, with an environment inside and out that reflects its importance to everyone.

“What was great to see was so many children choosing to do more writing in the writing area at lunchtime. Many children said that they hadn’t noticed that they’d been writing all day.” - Class teacher

What would the school do differently?

The school felt that it would have been better to take more time to prepare and plan the day and to make the most of all the opportunities the day offers. One particular area for improvement was that there were not any special activities running at lunchtime, which was a missed opportunity, unlike at the last Everybody Writes Day that the school ran where this was integrated into the day.

The school felt that they would also try and involve more people from outside school with the day, and particularly parents. The school would particularly like to develop the involvement of parents in writing projects as they feel this would also have a positive effect on children’s attitudes towards writing - some initial thoughts are perhaps catching parents in the playground before school and involving them in some low key writing activity that is non-threatening (an idea taken from the Macaulay School Everybody Writes video case study).There is also a plan to get feedback from pupils on the Everybody Writes events that the school has done so far, and to see what their ideas for future projects might be.

Legacy

In terms of a legacy, the project has produced a realisation in teachers that to feel less constrained when writing, pupils should be given more creative choices. This is now something that the school is trying to encourage at all levels.

“The Magical Writing Day has shown that when the children are given the opportunity to choose their genre, they are motivated to produce some lovely writing. It is something we are trying to do far more.”

An artistic display of invented magical creatures

Resources

A large variety of inexpensive yet effective resources were used on the day - chalk on black paper, charcoal, gel pens, silver paper, wax crayons, food colouring, tea bag-stained paper, glitter.

The school realised how motivating it is for the children to be presented with more unusual writing tools and resources with which to write.

“Everything that we have done so far has cost very little money, but has been made possible because of the energy and creativity of the school team. Everyone has been involved, from the Head and office staff, the caretaker, the teachers and the LSAs, governors, and even ex-members of staff.” - Class teacher

The school’s writing weblog can be seen at http://www.redbridgeprimary.blogspot.com

Contacts

Chris Proctor, Class Teacher

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