Changing How We Approach Writing - Teaching Like a Writer

It was whilst getting to grips with lockdown and remote teaching that a much anticipated parcel dropped through the letterbox: Jenny Webb's Teach Like a Writer. Like many people, I have been constantly inspired when listening to Jenny's talks at various conferences and I was incredibly excited to read her latest book as teaching writing is something I have felt 'requires improvement' in my teaching. I hope by reading this blog anyone who has not yet bought the book is encouraged to do so as it brilliant but I also want to show how I have already used some of the ideas. It is important to note, the book is not about gimmicks, it is about changing the way we view and teaching writing. I am also looking forward to rethinking how we approach writing units at KS3 but this is a longer project. 

What initially resonated with me was the chapter titled 'Language and Power' which is an excellent polemic and call to arms on the power writing has to give a voice to those who perhaps don't feel like the written word, with all its rules and structures, is for them. We, as English teachers, are often beneficiaries of our education and can navigate these structures successfully so it is sometime easy to forget that this isn't always the case for the pupils we teach, for various reasons. Jenny argues that 'we must accept that the standard form of the English language is just one of the colours of our paint palette.' which I think is both a beautiful and powerful analogy. We must remember we teach writing, not so pupils can pass an exam, but so that our pupils can have a stake in our world. So they can make their voices heard as the written word is how we understand and shape the world we encounter. Jenny continues that we should, as teachers: 

'Strive to change the narrative about what and who a writer is. what a 'hero' or 'protagonist' is and who can have opinions about the great issues of our time.' 

 It was with these words echoing in my mind that I thought about how I could put this into practice. 

Putting this into practice: 

With the cancellation of the GCSE exams, I saw a great opportunity to explore this with my Y11s who we still had to teach for the last few weeks before the end of their course. With no exam as the end point, it freed me up to think about how we could teach 'real world' writing. 

I may not be a regular writer of poetry or fiction (although I do dabble) I often write blogs for my own personal account here or sometimes for my school. I have also written for the TES once, so I thought I would be brave and share some of my 'real world' writing with my Y11s. I also shared with them differences between writing for yourself and the process of writing for someone else (such as having a brief). 

I wanted to give them a writing task that was not just an exam style question, a task which gave them choice but also constraints. Therefore I gave them a list of topics which would give them some freedom to express their voice.

- Your experience in lockdown
- Your feelings towards being unable to sit your GCSE exams
- Lessons you have learnt through lockdown
- How you think the world might change after lockdown

I also gave them a tight 500-600 word limit.

I asked them to think about the piece they wanted to do and 'pitch' their idea to me via email. I then acted like an 'editor', reading their pitch and then emailing back with my suggestions. Often the pitches included too many ideas which would have made it difficult to keep to the word limit. So my job, as editor, was to pull out the best ideas. For example, one pupil wanted to talk about her experience of lockdown and mentioned all the extra things she had been doing as her parents were at work for the NHS. I pulled out this thread and suggested she write a piece about what life is like as the child of a key worker.

Aside from sharing my example and giving feedback on the pitch, I gave no further instructions, plans, guides or modelled responses. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of responses I then received. For many of them, this was the first piece I had marked where I got a real sense of their 'voice'. And, because it was their voice, trickier things like the tone and humour were more expertly crafted. Why? Because it was authentic.

So what has this taught me?

Creating an authentic voice is key to writing. We know this. Yet, do we give pupils enough opportunity to play with their own voice in their writing? A key principle of Jenny's book is that we need to slow down with our teaching of writing. Yes, pupils need to be able to sit down in an exam and spend 45mins writing about something random, but do that successfully they have to know how to use their own voice. That comes with trial, error, feedback, editing and redrafting. We don't need to rush to the end product without developing the underlying knowledge and skills to get us to this point.

If you would like to see the lesson I did with my Y11s, here is a link to the document we worked through together (this was taught during lockdown remotely).

Writing for the Real World Remote Lesson (link)