How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019
Lots of writing – the 200 word challenge
How to teach writing – Part 1
I’ve changed the way I view writing over the years, and now think there isn’t enough of it in schools. Students don’t write enough in English or in other subjects. There’s a simple reason for this: the expectation that every piece of work should be marked in depth. Senior leaders have propelled this expectation to the extent that, in some schools, teachers avoid extended writing so that they don’t have to mark so much. This has caused a problem. The fear of being judged by an outsider for not marking work has changed the balance in the classroom. The fear is a genuine one, but it should be addressed by any good senior leader. The students should be working harder than the teacher. Fact! An exercise book should be full of work. That’s what I want to see. If not, what have you been teaching and what has the student been learning? If we want students to be better writers, we need them to improve their fluency — and that only comes with constant writing.
In English, our units of work are planned around using a particular style termed ’transactional writing’. We spend whole terms analysing how and preparing to write in such styles, but the creativity, fun and enjoyment are leeched out when you are five weeks into term and now you get to write your very own letter to a charity. The immediacy of writing is often neglected. You either have wishy-washy musings about a character’s feelings in a play or you have a rigid style that students must emulate otherwise they have failed to understand the text type.
In my school, we’ve changed the way we view writing. We’ve made it a weekly thing. In the last lesson of the week, we get students to write a piece of fiction or non-fiction. Each week is a different style and a surprise. Rather than get students to produce one piece of extended writing a term, we get them to produce multiple stylistically different smaller pieces. They write more and, to be honest, what they produce now is more creative.
We followed a process very similar to the various writing challenges used in primary schools. First, we give the students a PowerPoint slide with the following information:
Persuade teachers that you are the best student in the school
You must include the following:
✵ A link to a historical event.
✵ A line from a famous song.
✵ A quote from a well-known speech.
✵ A simile.
✵ A fact.
You must include the following word in your writing:
Indisputable: it is true and nobody can argue with the fact. As in, Mrs Jones’ cooking is indisputably good.
Students then write for twenty-five minutes, aiming to produce at least 200 words. There are no interruptions. Students are expected to write without asking questions so they can build up their independence. If the text or task is particularly challenging, the teacher might clarify or reteach an aspect. During the writing, I will mark ten students’ work and help them.
For the second half of the lesson, students peer assess using the following format:
Peer assessment
1 Highlight and label the following: a link to a historical event, a line from a famous song, a quote from a well-known speech, a simile, a fact.
2 Circle any errors.
3 Write down what they need to do to improve the content/structure/writing.
4 Sign and date it.
Finally, I get students to respond to the peer assessment with this:
Correct each circled mistake and write a quick explanation of the mistake — spelling/I missed a letter/I forgot a comma.
In the final few minutes, I read out some of the best examples. If there is a really good one, I photocopy it for the next class so it can inspire and direct them.
Yes, this is the old kind of composition task that was commonplace many years ago, but it worked very well for both teachers and students. Teachers were happy because lessons were easily planned, and it helped revise techniques from other areas of the curriculum. Boys were happy because it was immediate, quick and gave them the freedom to use humour. Girls liked it because they could be more creative and because the previous teaching of writing was fairly restrictive. The students’ writing has improved but, more importantly, their voices have developed through writing more. And it’s not the same students producing the best pieces all the time. Who knew Lucy could be so sardonic and witty in her writing?
Students look forward to the 200 Word Challenge now. It’s a chance to be creative, to be surprised by the task, to experiment. We love playful and witty writers, yet we often don’t create the environment for students to be as creative as they might be. The manacles need to come off sometimes. Just get students to write more. When they are writing, they are thinking. And that is what we want.
1 A simple acronym used for persuasive writing to ensure that students use alliteration, facts, opinions, rhetorical questions, emotive language, statistics and tone.
2 AQA, GCSE English Language Paper 2 Writer’s Viewpoints and Perspectives: Report on the Examination, 8700, June 2017. Available at: https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2017/june/AQA-87002-WRE-JUN17.PDF.
3 C. Dickens, A Christmas Carol (Project Gutenberg ebook edition, 2006 [New York: The Platt & Peck Co., 1905]), p. 11. Available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19337/19337-h/19337-h.htm.
4 C. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Project Gutenberg ebook edition, 2004 [1859]). Available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/98-h.htm.
5 Or you’ll end up with mayonnaise on your tie.
6 A. Peat, Writing Exciting Sentences: Age Seven Plus (Biddulph: Creative Educational Press, 2008). His website is https://alanpeat.com/.
7 See http://www.andrelleducation.com/big-writing/.
8 A conditional sentence is a complex sentence often made from two clauses exploring the impact of a certain condition/context/scenario. One clause contains a condition: ’If I am late’ and the other an outcome or solution: ’you can start making tea.’
9 This is a big Welsh cuddle.