This is just a quick note to remind you that it will be National Writing Day on the 23rd June 2021 and this year’s theme is ‘Connection’. We are invited to write a poem, story or letter, within the box, or in the 280 characters of a Tweet. At our teachers’ writing group yesterday we talked about how we might approach it in our different settings. We were keen to make the day visible within our schools and so we have begun to think about how best to share and display the writing for that day. It may be that you would like to Tweet students’ writing. You can do so using #fillthebox #nationalwritingday @FirstStory. But you may like to exchange poems, stories and letters within the school or to display them so that many people can read them -and connect.

There are loads of resources on the National Writing Day website:

https://firststory.org.uk/writeday/

At our recent meeting we tried out an idea suggested by Kate Clanchy from the Arvon website, using Rachel long’s poem, ‘Omen’ which is a great little anecdote about family hair. We discovered that we all have lots of stories about hair, and that they are often closely tied up with identity, culture and connections of all kinds. One teacher told us of her fascination with barber’s shops -what goes on in there?- another of how she discovered that her much disliked tangly hair linked her to Irish ancestors going back hundreds of years and so now she loves it. There was a hymn of praise and love to a daughter’s distinctive hair and a list of relatives and their hair related to food -inspired by a photograph of a mother with ‘mushroom hair’.

We had a quick look at Neil Gaiman’s picture book Crazy Hair and we were recommended Hannah Lee’s picture book My Hair for younger children. You can find out more about Hannah Lee and how she wrote this book on the Booktrust website https://www.booktrust.org.uk and you can watch a great video of her reading it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNet1W_TMqM

I have been able to start writing club meetings in person again this week. We sit outside on the field in the lunchtime sunshine and write together in a companionable way. Writing together is such an important way of connecting. Maybe that is the main thing to think about for National Writing Day. How can we quietly connect through writing together?

This was going to be a quick note – but there is so much to share! We thought a lot about ‘connection’ and there are some good ideas brewing. We plan to share more ideas between now and the 23rd June. Watch this space!