Context

High Lane Primary School is a one form intake school near Stockport in Cheshire. Over recent years, improving writing has been a priority on the school’s agenda. Overall, the quality of pupils’ writing has improved across the curriculum, but enthusiasm for writing was lower than we would like. We wanted to encourage all pupils to become excited about producing high quality writing for a purpose. At the time of this project taking place, the school was also taking part in an economic awareness project called ‘Young Entrepreneurs’ and it was decided to link the two projects together to develop a real focus for the children’s writing.

Aims & principles

The project was based on the basic principles that:

• Pupils should see writing as an essential part of the world in which we live
• All pupils, regardless of age or ability, can produce writing of which they can be proud
• Pupils should be encouraged to be enthusiastic about their writing and the process of exploring language

Summary

The project involved researching, creating, developing and marketing a real product or range of products which celebrated pupils’ poetry writing in our school.

The poet Mike Garry visited our school to help us launch our project. He led an assembly that included all pupils and then worked with each individual junior class to begin to develop some poems. In the initial assembly, the pupils were spellbound by his enthusiasm for his art. He shared some of his own experiences as a child who struggled to write in school and this particularly appealed to older pupils who faced their own difficulties with writing.

Mike Garry working with Year 3 pupils

Mike then visited pupils in Years 3-6 and worked for one hour with each class on developing their use of language through poetry. The children thoroughly enjoyed working with him and although time was very tight, they began to produce some exciting results. 

The Young Entrepreneurs group researched and chose the product for marketing over the next few weeks. As the pupils were in charge of major decisions about their project, this process to rather longer than anticipated. This meant that some of the initial excitement from the launch had dissipated by the time the pupils were asked to produce their own poems. To solve this problem, the Young Entrepreneurs led an assembly about their work and we were back on track.

Over the next week or so, individual teachers worked with their classes to develop a range of poetry from different genres to use on the pupils’ chosen product. Foundation and Key Stage 1 pupils developed their own poems which were individually printed on T-shirts. The theme of these poems was decided by the individual classes. The Young Entrepreneurs decided to develop a range of Frisbees with pupils’ poetry printed on it. They chose an open theme, but asked that pupils worked in groups to develop their work.

A group of upper junior pupils was involved in a ‘Writers’ Club’. Their role was to work within the Pupil Entrepreneur group to evaluate and select the poetry to be printed onto real products and sold as part of the Entrepreneurs Project. The Writers’ Club was also involved in other genre of writing linked to the real needs of the Entrepreneurs club. For example, letters to advertisers asking for advice, questionnaires to parents to ask which products they would consider buying, posts for the school website etc.

The infant classes celebrated their poetry by wearing their printed t-shirts in their class assemblies and reading their poems out to the school and parents.

The pupils sold their Frisbees at the Summer open evening, the school summer fair and at the Young Entrepreneurs celebration at the Town Hall in Stockport.

In Practice

In practice, the ‘real’ nature of the writing that was necessary to develop and sell the products produced far more opportunities to write for a real purpose than originally anticipated. This was particularly evident in the work of the pupils involved in the Young Entrepreneurs writing group. In future, this aspect of the project would be extended to involve more pupils and age ranges.

The biggest challenge we faced was co-ordinating the needs and requirements of Everybody Writes alongside the Young Entrepreneurs projects at the same time. In order for the poetry writing to be for a real purpose, the Young Entrepreneurs group needed to decide on the product that they wished to market and the theme of the poems, before the pupils could write them.

The market research, development of questionnaires and letters to local businesses took far longer than had been anticipated. This reduced the amount of time available to develop the poems, create the product and advertise and sell it.

Despite this, the work was produced to a high standard and all pupils were able to take part in poetry development for the products. All infants wore their finished t-shirts in their class assemblies and the junior pupils sold all of their finished printed poetry Frisbees.

Selling our Frisbees

Partnerships

The poet - Mike Garry
Our Young Entrepreneur writers’ group also developed links with a local printing firm and advertising agency.

Outcomes

The chosen theme of creating poetry to print on the children’s own ’special’ product was highly successful in motivating pupils of all ages and abilities. The sense of pride from the children in seeing their work in print and on a real product that people would pay money to buy was evident from the crowds of children and parents around the pupils’ stall at the open evening and the Summer Fair. When questioned at the beginning and end of the project, more than 90 per cent of pupils questioned had enjoyed taking part in the project and 90 per cent were proud of their writing and of the finished products.

All of the pupils in Year 5 agreed that the visit from the professional poet had helped to improve their confidence and encouraged them to take risks in their writing.

The Young Entrepreneur group felt that their ability to write letters and develop questionnaires had improved as had their understanding of persuasion within advertising.
Teachers felt that focus on careful word choices had led to improvements in vocabulary use in free writing with many pupils.

A selection of the pupils work was displayed in the main corridor of our school and received comments from many parents and visitors to the school.

Reception assembly

The Future

Future initiatives will be tied into next year’s Children’s Book Week and will include the development of a book of short stories written by the pupils, also to be sold at school fairs and open evenings, as well as the continuation of the t-shirt project in Key Stage 1.

Resources

• Cost of the visiting poet for a day
• Initial outlay on t-shirts, transfers, Frisbees and printing costs. (Most of the money spent was recovered in profit from selling the products)
• Time - the projects took a lot of time to develop and co-ordinate outside the usual school day, and this would need to be built into the thinking of anyone wanting to take part in a similar project.

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