The Riddle of the Writing Sphinx

Secondary English teacher Theresa Gooda explains why writing frames and rigid structures have limited scope to help develop ‘real’ writers.

The Great Sphinx, surrounded by scaffolding, during restoration work in 1990 Barry Iverson / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty

I was fortunate to visit the pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx many years ago. It was the trip of a lifetime to see one of the wonders of the world. I must confess to being disappointed, though, that the Sphinx was undergoing a process of restoration at the time, and was mostly hidden behind scaffolding frames. I lamented that I couldn't capture the perfect shot of this magnificent sculpture. My own photographs are more suggestive of a building site than one of the world’s largest and most famous monuments.

Writing is another wonder of our world. It is a complex process that draws on all sorts of writer’s resources, requiring far deeper foundations than the end result of squiggles on a page might suggest. Enabling students to create texts involves tapping into their knowledge of all sorts of linguistic structures and patterns via multiple routes and genres. Who wouldn't be grateful for a helping hand?  It is no surprise that novice (and experienced) writers welcome guidance, pointers, and frameworks along the way, seeking a leg-up wherever it is offered.

This perhaps explains why writing frames for genre writing and PEE (POINT, EVIDENCE, EXPLAIN) and PETAL (POINT, EVIDENCE, TECHNIQUE, ANALYSIS, LINK) for written responses to reading can, in some circumstances, be attractive for novice writers and teachers of writing. But it is worth remembering that they remain scaffolding outside the ‘building’ of the writing. They do not amount to an end product. We definitely don't want to ‘see’ them. Such scaffolding needs to be removed, as soon as possible, so that it doesn't spoil the picture.

PEE, PETAL and their other, sometimes elaborate incarnations may, if not used judiciously, ultimately end up spoiling the writing. As soon as writing becomes formulaic, it ceases to be a wonder. The helping hand becomes the very thing that ends up restricting students. If paragraph after paragraph of writing follows an identical pattern, there is no opportunity for novelty or surprise, no space for originality or flair - in critical or creative writing. As Peter Thomas writes, frameworks such as these ‘support a discipline of Lego Linguistics but do little to develop a humane version of the English curriculum or improve students’ real writing.’ Simon Gibbons also notes the resulting marginalisation of student choice, voice and personal response in Death by PEEL.

Perhaps the answer is to provide those supports when they are necessary for ‘stuck’ writers, but to remove them at an early stage; and to encourage students to see PETAL and its counterparts not as rigid but as amorphous. Not only do the petals of even a single flower assume many variegated shapes and forms, but individual petals can be scattered in the air as confetti, landing any which way, or being carried off by the wind.

Additionally, we have a responsibility to find multiple routes to support ‘stuck’ writers, by modelling different approaches, rather than restricting students to a single thoroughfare. This will allow teachers to open up the creative possibilities of writing, including critical writing, rather than narrowing them down to a single way. Writing requires careful induction into a community of practice, ‘borrowing the robes’ of writers that have gone before by exploring plenty of texts and trying out their rhythms. It is liberating for students to find their own patterns within texts and explore them, rather than particular patterns being imposed on them.

The English & Media Centre have long been advocates of this kind of more playful, exploratory approach to writing, reflected in such resources as Just Write, an illustrated workbook for KS3 students designed to ‘harness pupils’ enthusiasm for writing and to develop their writing “muscles” ’.
Like the NWP, the emphasis is on empowering students to reach a point where they can trust that, as writers, they can afford to take a risk with writing. 

Writing is, after all, a risky business.

To return to the poor Sphinx, I have no doubt that some sort of scaffolding structure was necessary while the Egyptian colossus was first being carved in limestone 4500 years ago, but it did seem a shame that I had to see it that way, with its true power and beauty hidden. 

Let's not keep our classroom writers hidden beneath confining frames, stuck on a building site, but allow them to carve out their own wonderful forms.

What a line can mean

Early Years teacher and NWP social media manager, Rebecca Griffiths, writes about developing talk and writing in EYFS through journeys and familiar places.

Exploring familiar places is a great way to encourage and inspire writing.

This week my class have explored journeys they take each day and their homes. Inspired by Pat Hutchins’ Rosie's walk, and Carson Ellis’ Home, the children discussed leaving their homes to travel to school, to see family, or to on an adventure.

We began with an unfinished, simple road drawn on the reverse of some repurposed wallpaper. During the discussion, I asked children where they would like the road to go and provided pens so they could draw as we talked.

After our class discussion, children chose to dip in and out of this activity throughout the day, adding homes, places that hold special meanings, transport, pets, and a dolphin bus!

They named their contributions and labelled some features. After a while, a conversation emerged about travelling to and from each destination on our road. I drew a line from my house to Albert's and said, "I'm coming to visit you". This ignited a huge interest in what a line can mean. Soon children had drawn trails across the map, in and out of windows, under houses, around cars and beneath the sea.

Sometimes scaffolding can be the simplest of interactions. The children will make the learning their own, meaningful and purposeful to them, if we just give them time.

If you'd like to learn more about developing your writing pedagogy, join our FREE monthly writing group on zoom and connect with like minded practitioners.

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Festive writing fun after new writing group launch

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:

Festive cinquains

Inspired by ‘Little Tree’

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!

Climbing into Writing

Bertie Cairns, of NWP Islington, writes about stairs as stimuli for writing.

Stairs. They’re everywhere. But it was not until we watched Simon Wrigley’s video on making origami stairs that we thought about them in stories, films and dreams and used them for the Islington NWP meeting in November 2021.

So: stairs as stimuli for all sorts of writing.

Stairs as metaphors: journeys to different places, from enlightenment to social climbing. Journeys to the underworld, slow emotional descents. Sitting on stairs in moments of indecision or slowly walking like Prufrock. They are bridges between places, offering goals, dilemmas, surprises. They hint at change and status and struggle. Hope and despair.

Film, of course loves stairs: https://nofilmschool.com/2016/07/learn-how-stairs-can-be-used-visual-metaphors-films

Simon suggested non-fiction uses for stairs: lists of animals with their adverbs or adjectives, stairs as steps to create essays, stairs to show how characters have changed. We thought back to back stairs, so, as Pip climbs, in Great Expectations, we see how he feels before meeting Miss Haversham and then how, going down, he feels afterwards.

And then we wondered what a staircase would say. What voice would it adopt? Does it like your steps, does it mind that we pay it no attention, does it trip up the unwary, the nasty, the arrogant? Our free-flow writing produced some staircases you wouldn’t want to climb!

We then used these initial thoughts to make poems on the stairs and used the space on the stairs as limitations: small step = few words, large step lots of words. We liked the way the poems could be written going up or down or have different poems on different faces depending on how you hold the folded paper. We loved the fact that they fold and will pop up out of our books but also when they are flat, they look like more conventional poems.

Concrete poetry with a licence to roam.

Location, Location, Location

South Downs NWP convenor and secondary English teacher Theresa Gooda remembers the power of space after lockdown and restrictions.

During 2021’s October half term I was lucky enough to escape west in my very rusty, old camper van for a few peaceful days in Dorset (we won’t talk about the alarming noises the engine made on the 350 mile round trip from Sussex). What a forgotten pleasure after repeated lockdowns and no travel for so long.

Each morning I woke up green hills and pheasants crowing, and was able to fling open the doors (on the non-raining days at least) and the luxury of writing my morning pages from bed - with the landscape in touching distance. It was awesome, in the old-fashioned sense of that word, and got me thinking about the importance of space and location in writing once again.

The South Downs NWP group has always favoured environment and landscape. Our very first meeting, back in 2013, took place on a busy summer’s day in the Pavilion Gardens in Brighton. Since then we have written along the banks of the Arun, on beaches, in museums, in tea shops, pubs, and once in a lifeboat rescue centre. Location seeps into the writing, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes slipping in quietly like the gentle chatter in a cafe. I’m fascinated by the ways that the character of writing changes depending on where we are.

Each NWP group has its own way of working, and most of us are enjoying remembering and rediscovering those ways as we revert back from more than 18 months of online meeting and writing. For now, South Downs NWP are continuing to meet via Zoom, but I’m looking forward to planning our next adventures in different spaces.

Gathering the Clans

NWP secretary and Wembley group convenor Alison Jermak explores the different ways that writing can be performative.

Reading Rebecca White’s poem ‘Dear Gavin’ makes me think about the performative elements of writing as a member of a writing group, or as a member of a class in which everyone (including the teacher) is writing together. Why is it important that the teacher is writing with the class? Because they become a participant, not a judge or a critic.

When starting to write we enter an ‘uncertain space’. This can appear as the blank sheet of paper, or when writing in a group or class, we are also conscious of the people in our writing environment. What characterises the kind of writing that NWP UK practices is the spontaneity of the writing (unplanned) and the performance of sharing this writing by reading it aloud to the group.

Although Rebecca’s poem is addressed to our current Education Secretary, she is really writing to her group in her time: herself and her colleagues. Through writing together, she is able to redefine who teachers are in our current context of politicians using the media to try and manipulate public opinion of teachers. Upon reading her writing aloud to her teachers’ writing group for the first time, it’s dramatic, disruptive, it’s being right in the middle of the action. In my experience in a classroom, when children begin to write together for their audience and read it aloud, this is when writing really comes alive for everyone present.

Sharing writing aloud within a group or class is also the importance of being listened to and acknowledged; not only that the meanings that you are communicating matter, it is also the meanings that you are reaching for, for this is culture in the making.

Let’s also consider the performative element of teachers repeatedly gathering in public places and writing together:

What teachers are doing is practising writing in the way that they would like to teach it.

Celebrating the Spread

South Downs NWP Convenor and secondary English teacher, Theresa Gooda, shares her experience of writing as part of the UKLA Teachers’ Writing Group.

As we pass ‘Freedom Day’ and the heightened messages about ‘stopping the spread’, it has been wonderful to welcome a different sort of spread: the proliferation of teachers’ writing groups. It is heartening, in these troubled times, to know that the practice of teachers writing, the opportunity for personal reflection about writing, and the possibility of changing practice through regular dialogic conversations with colleagues about writing, continues to spread.  Because we know, of course, that voice (in writing as well as speech) is ‘created’, both unconsciously but also deliberately constructed, in dialogue with other voices (Bakhtin, 1986).

As well as being privileged to lead the South Downs NWP group, and recently been invited to be part of the wonderful UEA NWP group, I have also lately participated in a new venture at UKLA: their Teachers’ Writing Group, run by Ross Young at Writing 4 Pleasure. They share similar principles with NWP about being part of a community that promotes research-informed writing teaching, and about the importance of being a writing teacher generally. 

Like much of our lockdown and post-lockdown life, meetings are remote, via Zoom. In the first meeting, in early June, participants were invited to experiment with dabbling as an idea generation technique alongside the reading of a children’s book. 

In July’s meeting, the work of writer-teacher Peter Elbow was championed, and in particular the value of free writing. 

Mostly though, the group achieved that joyful, valuable thing we all need: of carving out space and time to write. I’m already looking forward to August’s meeting.

Different Kinds of 'Knowing' About Writing

South Downs NWP Convenor and secondary English teacher, Theresa Gooda, discovers more about what happens when teachers write together.

The model of NWP meetings is very simple: you meet somewhere, (mostly online at the moment) and you do some writing, along with other teachers. 

The benefits of NWP meetings are difficult to articulate - and I’m very appreciative of writing teacher colleagues who try to capture quite what is so special about them. There’s camaraderie, of course, and there’s something powerful about the collaborative creation in the writing process, and being part of a writing community seems to translate into classroom confidence.

Many teachers who participate talk about it as being ‘transformative’, and I’m coming to understand that the transformation comes through understanding more about the process of writing through the experience and the reflection. I asked my writers at South Downs NWP what it is that they really know about writing from regular ‘doing’ of writing together. This is what they said.

They understand more about:

• The importance of selecting experiences (in prompts and stimulus material) that students can draw on.

• The value of being able to anchor writing to memory to generate rich response

• The power of sharing words together and using them as building blocks, like Lego

• What a benefit there is from the process of hearing your writing read aloud: how it becomes a form of drafting

• How a greater focus on craft and metacognition in relation to writing leads to a far deeper understanding of how language works and richer writing results
  

We tried to go further and pinpoint ways that classroom practice has changed as a result of this different kind of ‘knowing’ about writing. A selection of the ideas:

• Increased empathy: It’s easy to forget what it feels like to write. Teachers could more readily see and celebrate ‘little wins’ with individual students

• Bringing more, and more diverse texts into the classroom to enrich the curriculum

• Introducing shorter bursts of creative writing more regularly: several times a week for most

• A greater use of freewriting, creating an environment where writing is relaxed and not pressured.

• Encouraging students to begin by writing lists of words (rather than starting with the dreaded ‘plan’)

I’m so grateful, as ever, for the experience of writing with reflective teachers - both for the joy of hearing their words but also for insights like these.

It was also uplifting to hear that NWP Islington managed to meet in person last month. Let’s hope that others can follow suit and meet ‘irl’ very soon.

On Morning Pages

Helen Atkinson reflects on how writing Morning Pages has helped her through changing jobs, studying part-time for her MA and surviving a pandemic.

For the past two years I have written (almost) every day. Mostly in a journal (though sometimes on my laptop), mostly a page long (though it can be as short as a few phrases, or a multi-page scrawl), mostly in the morning (but often in the afternoon or evening too).

I have been following the principle of Morning Pages, though, as you’ll see above – I am no great respecter of rules. The phrase was coined by Dorothea Brandt in 1934 and later reinvented by creativity guru Julia Cameron and technically they are three pages of stream of consciousness writing done first thing in the morning. Like the ‘free writing’ that many of us will have done to stimulate writing with our classes, they are personal, not to be shared, and Cameron claims that they are designed to ‘clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand.’ Morning Pages are not fitted to an audience or purpose, they fit no mark scheme, and no planning grid. They are simply words, spilled out onto a page.

I was first introduced to the practice by writer and lecturer, Peggy Riley. Peggy’s ethos is that Morning Pages can be whatever we need them to be, to support our creativity and our wellbeing. At the beginning of a part time MA in Creative Writing, I needed the commitment to daily writing in order to guard against the inevitable takeover of planning, preparation and marking. I wrote on my short 10-minute train journey to school, documenting the landscape, the weather, the other commuters and my own worries and hopes for the day ahead. Much of the writing was just a release of feelings but some words and phrases were recycled into longer pieces of ‘proper’ writing at a later date. Most importantly, the pages allowed me to process my unhappiness in my job. They gave me the clarity and courage I needed to leave.

Morning Pages then bumped and scrawled their way on the bus to a temporary teaching job. Their soothing repetition helped me to settle in and provided an outlet for my thoughts as I met new students and colleagues, and began to teach new texts. Morning Pages could be about the lashing of rain on the bus windows or unformed reflections on a poem.

Just a few weeks later, the first national UK lockdown began and, like many teachers up and down the country, I made the transition to online teaching. Beginning my days with Morning Pages, helped me to make sense of the chaos in both the wider world and the little room where I was teaching lessons into a laptop screen. Fearful of the days blurring into one another, I began counting them in Morning Pages that untangled news reports and statistics, provided fictional escapes, and charted the development of the seagull chicks on the roof next door. 

Daily writing continues to help me balance my own writing with a rekindled love of teaching English. Sometimes, my Morning Pages are a free-form to do list or statement of intent, sometimes a draft zero of ideas, sometimes a wailed splutter onto the page. At times teaching pushes its way in, at others, it is writing just for myself. I let the pages be what they need to be on any given day. But some things are certain. I am more reflective because of Morning Pages, more secure in my own practice, both as a teacher and a writer, and a lot more resilient too.

Training to Teach, Forgetting how to Write

Secondary English teacher and NWP South Downs group convener Theresa Gooda reflects on her writing journey from childhood to teacher.

Like many English teachers, I’d always enjoyed writing as a child, and I was a prolific and enthusiastic producer of texts. I kept a diary, wrote play scripts that were tortuously rehearsed with siblings, and probably even more tortuously watched by elderly relatives. I think the first thing I ever said I wanted to ‘be’ was an author.

Through adolescence I wrote terrible poetry, terribly earnestly. At university I wrote and reviewed for the student magazine, and achieved my first published pieces.

And then came the relentless business of surviving my PGCE. Only ‘academic’ writing for assignments happened that year. Even the diary writing stopped. And the first few years of teaching were so hard - there was no time to write anything other than lesson plans. All that writing stopped. And I didn’t even notice it had stopped.

Not only had I forgotten about writing for an audience, I’d stopped doing the more important thing – writing for me. I made students write all the time, but under what I now see were slightly ridiculous conditions - and I didn’t ‘share’ the writing process with them. Instead I imposed rigid frameworks and grids and mnemonics about writing.

What I’d forgotten about - because I wasn’t doing it - was the complexity of writing. I’d forgotten the way it pulled at me, and how it had helped me negotiate things about the world I hadn’t fully understood, even in the bad poetry. Perhaps especially in the bad poetry.

Because I wasn’t writing myself, my writing classroom was restricted to convention, rather than energised by insight and reflected experience.

And then, one Saturday morning, I wandered into a bit of free CPD at the British Library and all that changed. I’d never really heard of NWP., but the idea of a writing workshop had tugged at me.

The first little writing exercise that Simon Wrigley suggested was deceptively simple: a version of writing history that you can find in the Remembering area of the website. We were asked to write down five moments when the act of writing had felt important in some way.

We shared our lists with somebody nearby. I began talking to a teacher next to me that I’d never met before, and the hall erupted as people shared their writing moments - with wonder if my case. We paused again for more writing: this time to freewrite about one of those moments and tell its story, whatever delight or injustice or fear or sadness it provoked then and now.

What we found, certainly what I found, was that these moments all packed a pretty hefty emotional punch. There was some very raw writing, some things that I hadn’t thought about for years. Outrage at my mother looking through my diary. Letters to a first love. Shame at my early plagiarism. Pride in that published piece.

I noticed then that they were a long time in the past, all of them. And yet each retained an emotional punch that provided a timely reminder about the power of writing. A power that doesn’t lie in a framework or grid or mnemonic, but in the act of writing from the inside out. It was a lesson that I have never forgotten and one that I transferred immediately to my classroom, where I became like Keats’ spider, spinning ‘from his own inwards his own airy citadel’.

Flowers Escaping Through City Railings

NWP Whodunit group convener Marjory Caine writes about the evolution of her writing group over the last year of lockdowns.

Subject: NWP Whodunit 14.3.20
Dear NWP Whodunit Teachers,
We’re meeting this Saturday at the British Library…

Not many of us turned up to that session! The fear of travel on public transport was already infecting our lives. But it was difficult to know how to write during a worldwide plague. My next email began:

Subject: Teachers as Writers Whodunnit Saturday 6th and Saturday 13th June 2020
Hi, our next session is scheduled for Saturday 13th June. I suggest a bit of a change to meet the extraordinary circumstances we find ourselves in….We will meet on zoom…

By the time of our next scheduled meeting, life as we knew it had changed completely. I remember that first zoom. Yes, it was great to see fellow writers again after so long, but that was the same as the usual coffee pre-writing meet up. This time, it was relief to see us still here. And then, the personal worries and experiences of each of us could be put aside for the time of our writing.

I had chosen walking writers as the focus – and wow, was it amazing what the group came up with for
‘your street, your lane, your garden, your footpath’. The prompt was simply to jot down a few words, phrases to describe what you focus on. Trees, wild flowers growing in the cracks of pavements, a bird call, the clouds.  

I can still see Susie’s description of flowers escaping through city railings in their exuberance of colours, shapes and scents.

As a group, we decided that as we had few social engagements that we would prefer to meet up more regularly, rather than keeping to the termly sessions. So, we have found character from archaeological artifacts and sites; nature writing from detailed observation and research; landscapes real and imagined; description of months and what they can mean to us – and this took us back to Anglo-Saxon ideas which we meshed with our own experiences.

Theresa’s evocation of the past and present became ‘Bronze Age Sister in my Sussex Country’ – a powerful meeting across the millennia:

Only fifteen minutes’ away through green
tree tunnel towns
when I put my foot
down early till I reach
South Downs Way and I come to you,
wending upwards
via gentlest graduations,
then steep slopes.
Half an hour to the top
non-stop although that’s hard
to do because of your view that shouts to be heard

 Katie’s vivid, in the moment, description of snow in the turning point of the year –

When winter raged in a silent
Manic confetti of calm, and it
Smashed softly into our coats,
Latching, glittering, onto lashes,
Hitching lifts on the tops of our trainers,

As the leader of the group, I’ve enjoyed preparing material to share with others, and to build on their personal responses that take the topics in so many different directions – all at once – as multiple directions are possible, of course.

It is the variety of the responses of the group that has really got me writing. And, as we have begun an e-booklet of polished session writing, I look forward to reading the next set of contributions from my fellow writers.

First of all, I will have to polish my own piece!

Metaphoraging Memories

Another blogpost from the original archive - by NWP co-founder Simon Wrigley, originally published in December 2018. It links with Jeni Smith’s recent reflections from the Director’s Chair surrounding ‘metaphoraging’, as well as documenting some of the growth of the project over the years, and serving as a further reminder of the strengthening of professional agency that NWP group membership provides.

On November 5 2018, at the invitation of Alison Binney, PGCE mentor, I joined her group of student teachers in Homerton, Cambridge. Alison also runs NWP Cambridge and champions the virtues of creative collaboration in classrooms. Her student teachers were sharing their KS3 classroom approaches to the text and context of Frances Hardinge’s ‘The Lie Tree’.  The room hummed with ideas:

Their pupils would use writing 

• imaginatively to open up spaces in reading texts

• personally in their own notebooks

• collaboratively to grow a ‘tree of lies’ on the classroom wall

• reflectively in detective journals 

• evaluatively in exploring Darwinism and symbolism. 

Their expressive and re-creative writing would be informed by debates, role-plays, ‘rumour soundscapes’ and visits to Wimpole Hall. Their writing would be inspired by mock-trials and by researching gender politics in the 19th century.

This was a luminous example of how, by creating experimental and trusting writing classrooms, pupils develop confidence to use writing for learning - excavating, connecting, reframing.

My role was simply to ask student teachers to discuss the ‘rights of the writer’ – and the professional values that informed writing for learning beyond the tests  - before using the space to write. 

We wrote from remembered sounds, places and people. We used prompts, lists, diagrams. We plundered texts and made close observations of objects. We heard each other’s voices.  We wrote for restoration, discovery and empathy. 

Afterwards we discussed some of the benefits of teachers writing together and alongside students: a reaffirmation of creativity, a sharing of feelings, a new understanding of the process – and its ‘affordances for learning’, and a strengthening  of professional agency.   

Here is a student teacher’s perspective on NWP.

On November 10, Jeni and I ran a writing workshop at the NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) conference in York. We called our collection of approaches ‘metaphoraging’. Together we foraged the hedges and woods of memory, language and literature for those seeds and berries – those discovered treasures  - that might sustain and fuel and fire our writing. 

The conference brings together a wide variety of professionals: published writers, education officers, lecturers, teachers and therapists – anyone who works with writing and education in schools, hospitals and the community. 

We spoke aloud our favourite words and enjoyed their collisions and resonances: espantapajaros (scarecrow), yee-haa, labyrinth, hoodjamaflip, boing, sellotape, nesh, hallelujah … We shuffled and invented compound words and defined them. We foraged folded paper shapes, sentences, texts and objects for new ideas. 

On December 1, I wrote with the Bedford NWP group. We explored ‘six-word stories’ – e.g. ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’ -  how they provoke readers to imagine cause and consequence, to infer and to carry out, what has been implied or folded tight. They can be hors d’oeuvres (out-takes) ‘The murders of kings and sleep’ (Macbeth) or  re-constructions of well-known works: ‘Incineration. Invitation. Visitation. Transformation. Infatuation. Association.’ (Cinderella); 

On December 10, I visited the English team in Haggerston School in Hackney. By writing together, we opened up a discussion of how and why we might reorient classrooms for learning beyond exam results.  The English team wanted students, in addition to their work for exams,  to experience writing as a  safe place to approach uncertainty and difficulty, to release emotion and to take back control of their own stories.

No Cigarette Breaks

Jenny Corser, Head of Junior English at an independent boarding school in Norfolk, writes about her switch from facilitator to writing participant through NWP, the joy of writing outside the curriculum, and her group’s transition to Zoom one year on from the onset of the Covid19 pandemic.

In every other way, I consider myself to be a ‘facilitator’ of learning. I create situations, tasks and environments to enable my students to write.

But belonging to an NWP group has taught me about the importance of me being a participant in my own classroom. The importance of writing alongside my students in order to share their experiences. To experience the fear of the blank page staring back at you, and then sense of accomplishment when you have completed a piece of creative writing.

How can we justify asking students to write if we are unwilling to model it ourselves? Without that, teachers could easily become hypocrites: “write a poem, but I’m not going to write one” and “read your poem aloud, but I am not willing to share mine.” It’s a bit like the doctor who lectures her patient to quit smoking, and then goes outside for a cigarette break! 

Being an NWP writing teacher also replenishes me with inspiration.

Teaching is a rewarding, yet often draining profession in which we are constantly giving our precious time and energy to students. Belonging to an NWP group gives me time out of my busy week to be inspired with new ideas that I can easily adapt for the age groups I teach. Something else that NWP has given me is the permission and freedom to experiment with teaching techniques that are not necessarily on the school curriculum; for example, book or journal making. There is a real joy in watching students concentrate on sewing the binding of their book and then decorating the cover to make it their own.  

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of our NWP group being on Zoom once a week. At first, I must admit I was skeptical. I could not see how it could translate from our lively monthly meetings gathered around the table at the University of East Anglia - with paper, glue, scissors, gel pens - to being muted on a screen.

But I was wrong!

Whether it is because we meet more regularly so no one feels they are writing ‘from cold’. Or because we are a close-knit group some of whom have been on writing residentials. Or because it avoids that mad rush out of the school gates, driving through traffic and searching for parking. Or perhaps it is because it allows us to write in our homes (perhaps with pyjama bottoms on!) where we feel most comfortable and relaxed. Whatever it is, the formula works.

Over the course of 52 meetings, I have filled two books full of poems, lists, drawings all of which I intend on sharing with my Department. As one member of the group recently commented: “it’s tonic.” 

Elves in the Basement

In this post, a version of which was first published in Autumn 2015, following the launch of the 26th NWP writing group, NWP co-founder Simon Wrigley reflects on the power and peculiar workings of the imagination and the implications for writing.

Frazzled by the new term though they already were, Luton teachers talked and wrote about, amongst other things, a father’s memory,  the nervous rattle of cup on saucer in the hands of a straight-backed woman, and how a daughter could summon her mother to her bedside by running away. These images and ideas emerged from collaboration.  And there was pleasure, surprise and energy as the teachers overcame their fears and re-acquainted  themselves with the peculiar power of writing lives observed, remembered and imagined.

 ‘Elves in the basement’ was how the neuroscientist, Peter Tse, described the internal workings of the imagination.  This was part of a discussion of ‘ imagination’ on The Forum, Radio 4 29.8.2015.

Apparently brain scans show that some neuronal networks are more active when ‘day-dreaming’ than when the brain is ‘task-oriented’ , and that when we are busy imagining, our ‘elves’  hop about between our conscious and unconscious. So, encouraging imaginative play realises potential while too much ‘deliberative’ action may limit learning. 

Arundhati Subramaniam, who was part of this same discussion, spoke about the verbal choreography of poetry which provoked understandings beyond - and sometimes before - the literal.  It allowed you ‘to get from one point to another without realising how the dots had been joined.’ She also made a special claim for poetry being ‘the only verbal art that embraces silences – the high voltage zones from which a poem draws its life.’ 

She quoted the third of her ‘Quick fix memos for difficult days’,

Some nights you’ve seen enough of earth and sky for one lifetime
But know you still have unfinished business with both.

Six years’ of evidence from NWP groups shows that such a model of voluntary, collaborative creativity is valued by many teachers – and has measurable value to the pupils they teach.  NWP not only supports teachers’ sense of professional agency, but also introduces them to approaches which inform, engage and enrich their writing classrooms.

The Little Books of Lockdown

Secondary English teacher Theresa Gooda makes a surprising discovery.

At last week’s UEA Writing Teachers meeting, Jeni Smith demonstrated how to make simple folded books. We used them to write gratitude lines and praise poems and reflected on how the spaces we had inhabited during lockdown had taken on new significance.

It was great fun, but I was a little disappointed. So often NWP writing meetings generate ideas that make an appearance in my classroom a few days later, but I couldn’t really see how to use this one. Great for primary colleagues, I thought, but not much use for my secondary students.

How wrong I was.

Cue Monday’s return to school and the staggered starts for different year groups - with even more staggered arrival at lessons due to covid testing. What to do with the students periodically appearing in small handfuls fifteen or so minutes apart?

Make books!

They seemed to love it. There were ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of appreciation as the books came into being. It was engaging and engrossing but also seemed to provide the perfect route back to writing.

Firstly, senior students in particular were grateful not to be plunged back into exam syllabus material straight away.

Secondly, the students enjoyed the creativity in design, and, with their newly-acquired expertise, showing more recently-arrived students how to do it. Spines and bindings became more and more colourful and original and moved far beyond the original slit design.

Thirdly, and most importantly, they provided the private space in which to reflect on what has been such a peculiar experience for many of us. As Sam Brackenbury explained in last week’s blogpost:

The pandemic, and the subsequent move to home learning, has shown the value of the writing communities that we foster and nurture in our classrooms. Children need shared writing sessions, that almost palpable energy which comes from writing together. They need discussion with their peers to hear how they bring meaning when interpreting, describing or reflecting so that they can broaden and deepen their own command of language and ways of seeing the world.

My desk was briefly filled with a whole library of ‘little books of lockdown’ (though they were all gone by Friday afternoon with students desperate to take their mini publications home).

Now to master the origami box to keep my books in…

The Significance of Writing Communities in Post-Lockdown Schools

NWP Secretary and Norfolk Year 3 teacher Sam Brackenbury reflects on the challenges - and solutions - for post-lockdown writing.

Writing will be on the minds of many teachers as we prepare in England and Northern Ireland for March 8th, and follow the lead of colleagues in Scotland and Wales who have already begun their phased return.

It is the subject that has seemed to have ‘suffered’ more than most during lockdown and, in some ways, this is not surprising. Learning is often a shared venture, but for writing, the presence of adults and peers seems particularly important for children. To commit ideas to paper and to take enjoyment from doing so they need their writing community.

The pandemic, and the subsequent move to home learning, has shown the value of the writing communities that we foster and nurture in our classrooms. Children need shared writing sessions, that almost palpable energy which comes from writing together. They need discussion with their peers to hear how they bring meaning when interpreting, describing or reflecting so that they can broaden and deepen their own command of language and ways of seeing the world. They need teachers, writing teachers, as models of how to think and act as a writer.

But more than this, they need that unique connection that comes from writing creatively or reflectively together as a group of people. So, as we approach the next few weeks, perhaps we should consider how writing, and our writing communities, might be used to reconnect, catch up and process the past few months. In turn, they might also support academic recovery.

We know that many children may have written very little despite all the effort and thought that has been devoted to designing remote learning. I know this is true of certain children in my classroom. Equally, many children will have experienced writing through typing, either for the ease of teacher feedback as they write on live documents or because parents have found this the only way to engage their children in writing.

Therefore, we might need a means to get pens and pencils moving again!

We should consider how low threat, high investment writing activities would allow children to feel free to choose what they might like to write about. These might be lists or short burst writing opportunities and, as we know our children, we will be aware of what will be safe and appropriate and how much direction to provide so as they are not overwhelmed or limited by the prompt.

Carefully chosen stimuli surrounding concepts such as thankfulness; their home; or themes around hope connected with nature may also facilitate conversations that help to process the impact of being apart from their peers and significant adults. It might be that we decide something light hearted is needed – again we know our children best! At the very least, these could facilitate talk and an opportunity for children to begin to feel comfortable sharing ideas publicly or in pairs and practice essential speaking and listening behaviours that might not have been exercised for some time.

Equally, it is likely that children will have engaged in far fewer dialogic conversations over the lockdown period and such discussions could come from exploring choices of words and explaining a response to a piece of writing, likes, dislike and the connections that have been made. Perhaps we might find that these discussions are easier because the writing is personal to the child. As always, we should remember that when we write, and talk about writing, we bring a piece of ourselves so acknowledging this gift and the bravery of sharing will be essential. Also important will be to remember the right to share only a little or nothing at all, and partake through listening respectfully.

We might consider the role of journals and how they allow the children to invest in the writing process and provide a safe space for them to experiment, invent, make mistakes and, eventually, develop a their identity as writer. This might need to be rediscovered! It might be that we need to simultaneously address handwriting and spelling to help remove barriers that might interfere with writing. There is real benefit to such practice and we know that writing by hand leads to quicker generation of ideas and, for older children, more effective note taking. However, it could be helpful to consider how these might be focused upon discretely and where or to what degree such an emphasis might be placed on these elements so that writing does not become intimidating or stifled.

Throughout these experiences, we as teachers should write alongside our children and think aloud our own writing process and responses to writing. We should model vulnerability and uncertainty, being stuck and revising words, as well as how we are generating ideas and establishing these into phrases and sentences.

Writing has certainly been different over the past few months and it is important to recognise that for some there have been some really positive outcomes from writing at home. Some children will have had many fantastic life experiences and discussions with their parents that will enrich their writing and we might also find that certain children have developed learning behaviours at home that will make them more independent and self motivated. Inspired by the successes of the virtual NWP teacher writing groups, my colleague and I committed to holding one live session a week with our classes and considered how we might use Padlet for the children publish their work. This led to successful writing for many children. I told them how much I enjoyed writing with them and missed this time in class. They returned the sentiment, explaining how they loved the online sessions and wanted to write for longer so I am looking forward to this continuing in person next week.

It is not the entire answer but devoting careful attention to our writing communities could be part of how we appraise the emotional or academic consequences of the pandemic and help the children to reconnect with each other this half term and beyond.

The 'Writeness' of Writing Journals in the Classroom

Secondary English teacher Theresa Gooda writes about the benefits of a writing journal approach, and why right now is a good time to introduce or relaunch them.

I am enthusiastic about the value of using writing journals in the classroom, and have spent time considering how to introduce and develop their role. These are ideas that have been built up over around a decade of experimentation in Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 classrooms (though what I was doing in terms of writing teaching for the first ten years of my teaching career prior to that is anybody’s guess). 

But I was recently asked by a PGCE student about where she might find out more about writing journals, and I was forced to confront what I think I ‘know’ about them - and where indeed I ‘know’ it from!

It turns out, of course, that my thinking is heavily informed by NWP writing, and specifically ideas in Introducing Teachers’ Writing Groups and Writer’s Notebook though there are some other influences in there, too. 

Choosing a notebook

I ‘know’, for example, that students should be encouraged to choose their own notebook to use, or make one, rather than being given an ‘ordinary’ exercise book as a writing journal. In part this is an initial signifier that the journal represents something different from other school ‘work’. It has an identity unique to its writer that denotes something about ownership of the writing it contains. It is the size and shape that the writer wants it to be, not dimensions that have been imposed on them. It is playful. It is the place where students, and teachers, can develop their writing voice and ‘where you can flex your muscles in many different ways’ (Smith & Wrigley, 2016: 52); it is ‘a conversation with yourself’ (Ibid., 53).  

Resistance

I ‘know’ that it is hard to set up initially, and needs to be used regularly if it is to be habit forming. It is sometimes hard to coax students into a new way of working and a new way of writing. Some students are resistant, and not ready to see its usefulness (Ibid., 53). But it is always, always, worth the effort in the end. 

No marking

I ‘know’ that this book should not be marked. If it really is a journal then it is private, and can’t be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny that other school exercise books would. If the writing is truly to be free, then students have to know that I am not looking over their shoulder. I can’t ‘perform’ writing if I am being watched at each stage of the process - my internal editor would kick in before anything really fluent or creative arrived on the page. If I can’t do it, as someone who gets paid to write, how can they? Elbow (2000:134) describes the need for what he calls ‘blurting’ that may, or may not, lead onto something more surprising and interesting. I therefore explain that it is a place where students can ‘blurt’. They can freewrite, brainstorm or do anything else related to writing.  It is informal and no one else has to read it - ever.  There is no need, therefore, to focus on grammar and spelling, unless they are important and you want to. There is no need to be concerned with what are merely ‘secretarial’ aspects of writing (Cox 1994 : 169).  The emphasis is on the ‘writeness’ of the writing, not the ‘rightness’ of the writing.

But I also ‘know’ that this approach is controversial. Students may potentially make disclosures in their writing that challenge safeguarding responsibilities. I therefore have a sticker that students put on the inside cover which looks like this:

Choice

I ‘know’ that choice of writing is important (Nagin, 2006). In order to develop their knowledge about writing, students also need opportunities to explore their meta-cognitive thinking in relation to the processes involved in learning to write. It helps then if I write with the students, alongside them in real time, and model mistakes, wrong turns, dead ends. But I also show the bits that I am pleased with, that might develop into something more, modelling that metacognitive dimension.

Sharing

And I know that, after a while, as they grow in confidence, students will want to share their writing, so as indicated on that sticker, I encourage them to share verbally when they are ready, but also to regularly choose something that they have written during one of our writing sessions to develop further and submit as a polished piece - an idea that builds on Graves (2003) who foregrounds the importance of ‘publishing’ during the process of writing, suggesting that for younger pupils this should be one in every five pieces, and for older students one in two or three.  He conceives of publishing as some form of binding which can be checked out from the classroom or school library, but remote teaching has opened up the technological possibilities in far more dynamic and less labour-intensive ways.

So, as many of us in the UK return to full face-to-face teaching from next Monday, perhaps now is the time to launch, or relaunch, those writing journals - after all, our students need a way to make sense of the challenges of lockdown and the trials of living through a global pandemic.

References:

Cox, B. (1994) Writing p169-178 in Teaching English edited by Susan Brindley. London: Routledge.

Elbow, P. (2000) Everyone Can Write: Essays toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, USA: OUP.

Graves, D H (2003). Writing: Teachers & Children at Work, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Nagin, C (2006). Because Writing Matters. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Smith, J. and Wrigley, S. (2016) Introducing Teacher’s Writing Groups, Exploring the theory and practice.  Oxon: Routledge.

From the tap end of the bath

South Downs NWP Group Convener and NWP Website Editor Theresa Gooda shares what she has learned from visiting other NWP groups.

In these pandemic times I have managed to travel the country through writing, ‘attending’ meetings in East Anglia, London and Sussex in recent weeks. I have been guilty of repeatedly gatecrashing other groups - remotely of course.

Today marks Day 50 of Lockdown 3 in my part of the world, and writing has been my solace through this most brutal of years. Because I run a group myself, one that has continued to meet via Zoom since March last year, I find that during our meeting time I am not able to truly relax and write. It might be because I’m wondering how everyone else in the group is getting on, reflecting on how I’ve introduced a poem or prompt, checking on what comes next.

So it has been a wonderful privilege to join in with other groups, where I have found my fellow writers so welcoming. And it simply wouldn’t be possible in ‘ordinary’ times.

It has been fascinating to see how each group has its own identity and operates slightly differently. Some share words and drafts and thoughts frequently throughout their session; some save the sharing to the end. Some are asked to think about a theme in advance or bring something along to a Zoom meeting. Some go away from the screen to write, returning to the Zoom call after a certain amount of time. Some keep their cameras on all the way through. Some write one week and share the next. Some collate their drafted writing; others keep their finished work private. Some meet weekly, some monthly, some half-termly.

I’m also struck though, by some of the similarities between them:

Firstly, the warmth, humour and laughter. Is that writers? Teachers? Writing teachers? NWP writing teachers? It permeates everywhere.

Secondly, the recommendations - for books, memoirs, plays, poetry, resources, classroom ideas. There is a constant sharing as reference to one thing triggers memory of another. My ‘to be read’ pile grows and grows, and I am grateful.

Thirdly, the imaginative, creative responses where there are always, always, ‘diamonds’ to be found ‘in the dustheap’ of raw, unpolished writing - as Virginia Woolf might say. I wonder how tired teachers at the end of long days working under the toughest of circumstances pull off such magical images and ideas - but they do it without fail.

Last night, as we were writing ‘I’m from’ lists in response to George Ella Lyon’s ‘Where I’m From’ poem, one member wrote that they were from the ‘tap end of the bath’. The image resonated with me - as the oldest of three siblings, I too was saddled with the tap end. Those five words conjured a childhood world - scorching drips, protruding metal. No, insisted the writer - the tap end is the best part, the warmest part, in control of topping up the water when it’s needed.

So perhaps I can push it to serve as a rich metaphor for the project itself: as NWP members we are very much at the tap end, being ‘refilled’ with each visit.

No more guilt about carving out creative space

Whodunnit Group Convener Marjory Caine discusses her return to writing through NWP.

‘Yes, I used to write, too.’

This was in response to a chance conversation at a NATE session on writing led by Simon Wrigley. We had been asked to jot down our writing memories and then discuss. Was this current lack of writing present across the whole English teaching cohort?

I joined the Whodunnit Group and found many tentative writers – those of us who wanted to write but just did not have the confidence, the time, the incentive, the stimulus. You name it, we had the excuse – but yet we asked our students to write every day – and then judged them.

Simon and Jeni’s approach was a breath of freshness into a classroom practice stultified by assessment objectives and fronted adverbials. As a group, we learnt to write together and share, and appreciate the richness writing brings to us as teachers, and now, writers too.

At the same time, I had started a doctorate investigating the creative writing of my A Level English Language students’ creative writing coursework (yes, in that brief flowering of creative opportunity in the classroom). What I had researched I found in the community of practice of the NWP meetings. 

And I found my voice.

It was a thrice trepanned skull in the Wellcome Collection. And that was where I found a way into the Neolithic world of my character, Rhia. Each writing session would end up with another appearance by her. And then I started writing at home. I made time. I thought about plot and structure. I shared my writing fears with my students. And wrote alongside them. Confidence improved both in the students and in me.

Writing retreats were made possible. I no longer felt guilty about carving out creative space. Here were members from other NWP groups who were willing to share and support. I felt like a writer. I thought like a writer.

And there was always another session with Simon leading our group with exciting and varied prompts. Then came the time when Simon asked me to lead the group. Since then, I have enjoyed the termly challenge of sourcing my source material. The venues are always stimulating because the group members are keen to write. We have been walking writers through Roman London, stood by the River Thames and heard its song, gazed into the faces at the National Portrait Gallery, toured the many stories in Westminster Abbey and many more. Always, I am amazed by the variety and breadth of writing that emerges from a Saturday morning in London.

In the seven years I have been with NWP I have changed from being someone who used to write, to someone who writes regularly, because it is part of who I am. I enjoy the creation of a poem, a piece of prose. I write fiction and non-fiction. I respond to my environment, to the people I know, to new experiences. Having my work valued by the group has given me the right to say that I am a writer who writes. Playing with language, working at finding the best phrase, figuring out a poetic rhythm: these are challenges that enrich my writing life.

Yes, I write. I am a writer.

A lifeline for poetry

NWP Free Spaces Group Convener David Marshall explains some of the challenges of running an NWP group - and why it’s worth it.

I run the London ‘Free Spaces’ group, which meets once or twice a term in different museums and galleries around London. Recently, we’ve been moving towards twice a term, as one didn’t feel quite enough. There’s around 5-7 people who regularly attend and there’s quite a lot of ‘silent’ members, who are on the email list but never attend or participate. I give people the option of being removed from the list, but few ask to be removed. I’d like to think that, though some don’t attend, they like being part of the group nevertheless. The way I see it, it’s important that the group meets regularly so that everyone knows that it’s meeting. That way, there’s always the option for people to come along one day, even if they never have.

One of the challenges is getting more teachers interested. I try to spread the word, but my network is quite limited. The other thing I’m aware of is that most of the regulars are either retired teachers or work in private schools (like me). It is very important for anyone in either of these two categories, but sometimes, I feel like I want it to reach more teachers on the front line of education. But something I remind myself is that the people who come are those who want to be there, and it must be important to them for them to give up their time.

I’m very committed to the group and to running it, even though I’m a full-time teacher. I took over when I returned from living abroad about 3 years ago and found that the group hadn’t met since I left. I emailed round and we started up again. We go to a range of places but find it’s easy to rotate to some of the same ones, particularly places that are central and have big cafes!

For me, the NWP is important because it’s a writing community. I’ve taken writing workshops and courses, some lasting several months. But there’s something great about a community because you’re there for each other over a long period of time and can build relationships. The meeting up for a chat is as important as writing together, sharing work and giving feedback. Often we find the writing leads on to a discussion about world events, politics and other things. It’s like it’s a catalyst for having important conversations that we don’t often have at home or with our colleagues.

It’s also important to me because it’s how I started writing poetry. I attended a workshop run by Jeni Smith and Simon Wrigley about 10 years ago at the British Library (during the NATE conference). Someone mentioned that it was important for English teachers to write in order to be able to teach writing. After this, I started writing regularly and set myself the challenge of writing a poem a day for a year. This got me into it, and helped me to improve. I continued writing regularly, sometimes taking classes and entering competitions or sending work to publications (very little was published). In Shanghai, I was part of a poetry group that produced a home-made zine and hosted open mic nights.

Since returning to London, I haven’t been doing as much writing. It’s been harder to find the time and so the NWP group has been a bit of a lifeline for poetry, keeping it going at least once or twice in a busy term. My aim is to get back to writing little and often. I think I’ll need to set myself a challenge like I did before.

However, there’s no doubt it has affected and improved my teaching of writing. I think the most important change is that it’s helped me to understand how difficult writing actually is. It has given me much more empathy, because I know that I would struggle with certain tasks just as much as the children do. Thinking a bit like a writer also helps me to spot where improvements could be made in a child’s work. It means I’m more able to see, not just what the child needs to do, but how. I can show them the way to make a change in their own writing.