Context

Writing has been a whole-school main priority over the past few years at All Saints’.  In a drive to raise standards and enthuse the whole community to “Be Writers”, we felt that holding an Everybody Writes Day would be a great celebration of writing. 

Aims & principles

• For the whole school to share a buzz about writing by enjoying an amazing, fun, writing day that will be remembered
• For writing to be given a higher profile; prior to, during and after the event by pupils, teachers, parents and all stakeholders
• To use drama techniques from previous INSET to encourage role play and experience events prior to writing about them
• To engage boys (underachievers) with a “boy-friendly” topic such as Pirates

In Practice

Planning
After attending a highly motivating Everybody Writes seminar, I came back to school with a bank of “ready to go” ideas seen during the day to support teachers in teaching creative writing.  I completed the school writing audit grid, and then asked staff to contribute notes and discuss the features of writing at our school, forming the basis of actions for our Everybody Writes Day and to feed into my future SIP for Literacy. The School Council had also requested that we held a Pirates Day at the end of term.

Before the day
I created a poster advertising Everybody Writes Pirates Day and distributed it around the school and to parents.

For homework we requested that all children make a scroll ready to write on when Everybody Writes Day arrived. 

On the day
The whole school came to school dressed as pirates, with teachers and some parents too.  We noticed that being in role in this way really helped children to use their imagination. 

To start with, we had a whole school assembly where we used a powerpoint presentation about pirate language the school council had made; we also gave the teachers pirate names for the day.  We sang pirate songs and read aloud some “pirate writing” from parents who are writers to inspire children for the day. 

Children were split into eight groups of mixed aged children from Reception to Year 6.  In the morning, each group made a pirate ship and carried out other “pirate activities” including reading books, drama activities and collaging pirate words from the newspaper.  During lunch time, children had brought in their teddies (dressed as pirates of course!) for a teddy bears’ picnic. 

The dinnerladies were all involved too and had planned some games including “pin the tail on the parrot” and treasure hunt games. In the afternoon, each child wrote something about pirates and were give freedom and choice on the genre of their writing.  Having given the children plenty of time to talk in the morning about pirates, I feel this was of great advantage to those children who knew very little about the subject.  To start with writing could have turned some children off, whereas having spent a good amount of time talking about pirates, all the children were fired up and ready to go by the time it was their independent writing time. 

To end the day, parents and friends of All Saints’ were invited to a whole-school assembly where a wonderful piece of pirate writing was chosen as the winner from each group and read aloud.  All winning children received pirate prizes.  At the end of the assembly all children placed their pirate writing in a special treasure box which was then on display in the school entrance hall for all to look at. 

Outcomes

Great fun was had by all involved, with even the school clerical assistant commenting on what a successful day it was. 

Through dressing up the whole school came to life and really got into role, especially the deputy head who led the whole final assembly in pirate language!  We had many more parents attending at the end of this day, clearly keen to find out more about Everybody Writes Day, as it was “different” to open days and other special celebrations we have organised in the school.  Approximately 50 parents attended our end of the day writing celebration.

The older children supported the younger ones fantastically. 

To evaluate the day in the words of Roy, aged 7:

“I loved it because it was the best day in school- I have never seen a day like it before.  More days like this PLEASE!”

 

Legacy

Over the summer I intend to put all their pieces of writing into one huge school book which contains a piece of quality writing from every child (and teachers) to keep in pride of place at our school entrance.  This will be something highlighted to visitors to signify that writing is a high priority in our school and something which is highly valued as an enjoyable as well as vital life skill.

As a school that greatly values “pupil voice”, we will now hold another Everybody Writes Day based on what pupils have expressed an interest in (in our evaluation questionnaire, space astronauts / aliens or animals seem the most popular) so these ideas will definitely be taken on board for future events.

Resources

All children were asked to bring in cardboard boxes and tubes for their team (think about recycling cardboard afterwards - get your Eco team involved in the tidying up process after school, as we had lots left!).

Printable key words/ masks etc. (Sparklebox)

Borrowed library books from our local library.

Bought pirate books.

Prizes -  writing pads, pirate pencils, pens, rubbers, chocolate gold coins etc. all in party bags (Tesco and Matalan were very reasonably priced and had lots in the children’s party section).

Final thought

Next time, I would have held the day earlier in the autumn term, as due to a hectic timetable at the end of the term, there was not enough time for lengthy preparations or much time for evaluation after the event.  Also, I feel with more prior organisation I could have got more members of the school community (e.g. church members) involved to support and judge winners.

In an ideal world, we would have all made the pirate ships outside; however, due to weather constraints this was not possible.  Another challenge would have been to make the pirate ships big enough for all of the children to sit inside them to complete their writing in the afternoon.

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