Context

Brookside Primary School is a one form entry rural school, overlooking the National Trust property Lyme Park. The School Development Plan contains a focus to improve standards in writing by creating real life writing opportunities. The school was interested in implementing Everybody Writes as an ethos that would embrace real life writing and help to create enjoyable writing opportunities for its pupils.

Attitudes towards writing and attainment before the project

Writing was part of the curriculum, related to national initiatives. Brookside saw this project as an opportunity to extend their usual writing activities by inspiring children to see how writing can be taken beyond the classroom into the outside and local environment.

Aims & principles

The school had planned to create a cross-curricular teaching environment as part of theirr school grounds, and had been involved in applying for grants to fund their ideas. They wanted to show how writing could apply across all curriculum areas and be exciting for all ages.

“Becoming involved in the Everybody Writes project gave us the perfect chance to relate our planning to exciting writing opportunities: where the children, staff, parents and local community could become involved” - Headteacher

In Practice

The school decided that they were going to collapse the school curriculum for a week of special activities where the focus was purely on writing for different real-life purposes in a variety of exciting ways. They abandoned their usual routines and timetables, and each classroom environment was changed for the week. New writing materials and special books were provided to help inspire the children.

Every class spent time in the special new nature meadow, which – thanks to fund raising and a lot of hard work from friends of the school and governors - had its own magical entrance and pathway, a bridge, a storyteller’s chair engraved with text and benches, bird tables and animal houses to explore and use as the inspiration for writing.

At the end of the week the school had an open morning event where children could proudly share the work they had produced with their parents who were invited to visit. The school’s Summer Fair the following day also gave them the chance to share their Nature Meadow with friends and family in the community.

The individual activities enjoyed by the different classes are as follows:

RECEPTION CLASS
The children had daily visits to the nature meadow and wrote their own diaries based on what they saw or heard. They made special collections, and used non-fiction books to help identify the items discovered, along with hiding things for the creatures to find – and then writing about it.

Not only this, but they also re-enacted the story ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ in writing, actions and pictures, and created alphabet stepping stones using natural resources for the nature meadow, followed by writing signs to show who had made them.

The parents were also involved, as the children invited them to write about their experiences of outdoor play when they were young children.

YEAR ONE
These children made their own class wishing well and wrote their own special wishes on glittery pebbles.

They also read ‘The Magic Stone’ and created their own stone soup. In class, there was plenty of instructional writing, research work and the labelling of plants found in the nature meadow. They even produced some stepping stones – writing the names of their creatures in French.

YEAR TWO
These children wrote special stories and produced non- fiction booklets.
The children shared the poem ‘A House is a House for me’ and used this as a stimulus for writing about animal homes. The animals and creatures in the nature meadow helped here, and the children compared these to animals and creatures who live at the seaside. The children also planted a tree outside which provided the opportunity for instructional writing.

YEAR THREE & FOUR
Children had an exciting time working in shelters to undertake environmental investigative writing. The outcome was their creation of factfiles based on “mini-beasts”, along with pop-up books. In the classroom they made their very own large ‘POET-TREE’, with poems inspired by the project. In design technology , the children made ‘spider-catchers’, producing some excellent instructional writing along with this.

YEAR FOUR & FIVE
The children started off by reading and watching Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In response to this, they created indoor environment of trees with poetry inspired by their studies. In addition to this, they also produced some non-fiction writing about the classification and identification of plants and trees.

YEAR SIX
Inspired by a visit to the nature meadow, the Year 6 children made pop-up books about fairies, elves and pixies. Writing included letters, poetry, stories, and hidden codes. Their reading sessions were held inside a tent in the classroom.

Partnerships

The school worked with their governors, the PTA and the Local Authority to ensure the success of the nature meadow project and applied for grant funding from a variety of different sources.

Outcomes

A very exciting week was enjoyed by all members of the school community. Teachers created a school display where children’s work from across the school is on show. They also have a weekly ‘Writer’s Award’ where writing is celebrated and shared within the family assembly. The school’s future curriculum will include cross-curricular writing opportunities.

Attitudes and attainment after the project

“The year has been a great success for all. It has provided the opportunity for parents to become more aware of the writing and cross-curricular work undertaken on a regular basis. The planning for our special ‘Everybody Writes’ week in June involved our whole school community- children, staff, parents, governors and Local Authority advisors.

As a result, our whole approach to the planning of writing at Brookside has now changed. We proved that writing for a real purpose is the way to inspire our children – and we intend to move forward from this with further developments in the near future. In addition to all of this, we have a wonderful nature meadow as a resource area for our school community,” - Headteacher

Pupils’ comments:

‘…I loved writing poems for our POET-TREE’
‘..It was a brilliant week because our writing was made into such fun activities!’

Parents’ comments after the open morning at the end of the week:

‘..I never realised just how much work the children do in school! The writing produced this week is amazing! They have produced so many exciting booklets, poems, leaflets, stories… in such a short time!’

Legacy

All of the staff at Brookside agree that writing with a real purpose produces the best results. The enthusiasm and motivation from everyone before, during and after the week will now be developed further and future opportunities and special events will be planned. The School Council will become involved.

Resources

Time to develop the project in staff meetings was important, and teamwork ensured that the project was so successful. The school purchased new books for the project as well as a variety of plants. Money was raised and allocated for the bridge, storytellers chair and benches.

Final thought

All staff put such a lot of enthusiasm and planning into the week, and, in retrospect, agreed that too many activities had been prepared. There was enough to do to fill an extra week, and so next time the school may run the themed writing event over two weeks.

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