Rachel Booth, Primary English Lead, and Emma Barker, Secondary English Lead at London Metropolitan University, write about the recent launch of their new NWP group.

This Autumn, we launched the National Writing Project NWP with our PGCE trainees at London Metropolitan University. The simple premise is that writing and reading our own words aloud, for pleasure, helps us to become better teachers of writing.

This is an exciting opportunity to meet online once every half term, to read, write and share together.

It has been a privilege to work alongside NWP director, Jeni Smith. Jeni has been writing with teachers for decades, and even longer in schools. She believes that writing is fundamental to our emotional, social and intellectual well-being and to the ways in which we think and grow.

what did the trainees say?

“Excellent session inspired me to do a creative writing class. Wonderful how a few short pieces of prose can spark the imagination with skilled guidance”.

“I am a lover of words, and all that comes with it. It gives us the freedom to share our dreams and worries with others publicly or privately. 

Scaffolding this passion to primary school children is one of my first goals. This is what Jeni teaches us in her sessions. Highly recommended!”

“I really enjoyed the first session, I found it really emotional - in a good way - as I was conjuring up lots of nostalgic memories of family. It was great having such a small group too, as I appreciated hearing everyone’s work. I’m really looking forward to the next one!”

The Christmas Session

Jeni read Little Tree by E.E. Cummings and we created and shared cinquains from our winter words lists before creating wish baubles.

Inspired, the following day, one of our trainee teachers put it straight into action in school with their primary class:

Another tried out a different part of the session with her class and shared the following reflections about her experience:

Today, I had year 4 complete the angel wish baubles idea. I printed off bauble templates and lots of images of angels. I was really impressed with some of the wishes the children wrote on the back:

“I wish that everybody would be kind”

“I wish everybody would show empathy”

“I wish that other children around the world get education”

Others wrote wishes for Christmas presents..! It was a really lovely lesson and I so enjoyed helping with the designs and then the final act of tying them onto the line in the classroom.

I also printed off Christmas Tree templates for children to produce word art texts, using words relating to Christmas. I have attached a picture of one of these.

A big thank you to Jeni for the ideas, it was a thoroughly enjoyable lesson.

What next?

Our next session, in the New Year, will involve origami!