Introduction to “The Writing Book”

In December 2017, an Indonesian archaeologist named Basran Burhan embarked on a daring trek across the island of Sulawesi, traversing mountains and thick forest paths to reach the mouth of a limestone cave, only accessible during the tropical dry season. Inside the cave, he made a remarkable discovery: a painting of a wild pig, daubed on the cave wall some 45 thousand years ago. It is believed to be the oldest piece of representational art ever discovered. Since the dawn of humanity, our species has been driven by an insatiable urge to make our mark –  to leave an imprint that says, if nothing else, ‘I was here’. It is one of the key distinctions between us and other animals, at least as far as we know; it’s possible that our cats are secret playwrights, but we’ve seen no evidence of it!

The first true civilisations are believed to have emerged in Mesopotamia’s fertile crescent, between the banks of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates, around seven thousand years ago. The Mesopotamians started to do something more sophisticated than drawing mere images of objects: they began to combine particular pictures in uniform ways to carve detailed messages in stone. These evolved into Egyptian hieroglyphics and the beginnings of what we might call writing. The next great innovation came from the Phoenicians, a powerful trading culture during the first millennium BCE, who developed written symbols that weren’t recognisable pictures at all, but merely stood for particular sounds. The Phoenician system of writing was exported to Europe, where it was picked up by the Ancient Greeks, who named the first two letters alpha and beta; the alphabeta, or alphabet, was born. The rest, as they say, is history – quite literally, as it was the development of writing that enabled human beings to record our own history in the first place. It was writing that enabled scholars to share their discoveries and governments to administer their kingdoms. From papyrus to parchment to paper, from the monastic scribe to the printing press and the word processor, it is writing, more than any other human invention, that has built the civilisation in which we live. Writing is, quite simply, one of the most important things that there is…

But try telling some of your pupils that. 

Learning to write is hard and learning to write well is even harder. Implausible though it may seem, some of the young people in your class may not be entirely grateful to the Mesopotamians and the Phoenicians for breathing life into the written word. They can speak, after all, and make themselves understood. They’ve got spell-checkers and autocorrect on all their devices (take that, Phoenicians) and, for the most part, they can read written English well enough to function comfortably in everyday life. What more do they need to know about writing?

Well, quite a lot, actually. The ability to write persuasively is hugely empowering, for example, and the ability to entertain others with one’s writing is tremendously fulfilling. The problem, as with so many things, is that many of the advantages that come with being good at writing are only apparent once you get there. Teaching children to write is not entirely different to coaxing them up a hill or mountain: it’s painstaking for both of you, they’re likely to moan the whole way up and sometimes you’re not actually sure that you’re going the right way. But then you get to the top and you show them the view. You can see the wonder in their eyes and the sharp intake of breath before they shrug self-consciously and say: ‘Yeah, it’s alright I suppose.’ But the wonder was real – and you both know it. That’s what teaching is all about, right?

It can be tempting to think that all our pupils must, eventually, learn to write through osmosis – that if we simply expose them to enough examples of competent writing, they will learn to pick up the tricks of the trade without effort. It can be tempting to treat writing as an inherently creative, personal and subjective exercise, but this is not always the case. There is a methodology to it and this sometimes needs to be taught explicitly. This is especially true for children who may not speak English at home. This book is intended to support teachers in taking decent emerging writers and making them truly proficient. However, regardless of where your pupils are on this journey, the same principles apply: they need lots of good examples, plenty of opportunities to practise and specific, targeted feedback.

So how do we get our pupils to the summit of the hill? How do we genuinely and meaningfully improve their writing? How do we get them writing sentences that sound good? How do we get them writing whole texts that someone might genuinely want to read? Well, like any steep climb, it isn’t easy but it’s also not impossible.

Unfortunately, generations of teachers have been let down by a lot of very questionable guidance and advice. The National Curriculum never really gets it right, whoever is in government, and Key Stage 2 assessments rarely incentivise the right things. Some people will tell you that if we could just find the right checklist of magic ingredients that children must include in their writing, then we’ll finally nail it. These self-appointed experts would have you take up half the space in your children’s English books with detailed lists of objectives and success criteria like use powerful adjectives and use personification to describe a setting. At the other extreme, a different but equally questionable group of experts will tell you that if we stop telling children how to write completely and just let them ‘embrace their creativity’, then all sorts of wonderful things will happen by magic. For these irrepressible free spirits, your job as a teacher is merely to inspire your pupils – to give them something that they’ll want to write about.

Instinctively, most practising teachers know that neither of these groups of experts has got it quite right.

This book outlines what you might call our philosophy when it comes to the teaching of writing, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious. That philosophy can be summed up by saying that writing is there to be read. That seems obvious but it’s a principle too often missing from the way that we are encouraged to approach the teaching of writing. The problem with both the ‘exhaustive list of success criteria’ approach and the ‘just let them be creative, dude’ approach is that both ignore the role of the reader. The first approach suggests that the writer’s role is to take orders from some established source of knowledge about what makes good writing, rather than creating something for an audience. The second approach encourages a sort of creative narcissism on the part of the writer, by which nothing matters other than their own desire for self-expression, regardless of whether or not it resonates with anyone else. To really enhance our pupils’ writing, we need a realistic, practical path that places the reader at the centre of everything.

We do not claim to be experts on anything, apart perhaps from the various tracks and characters on Mario Kart™ 8. We have attempted to incorporate some of what is known about the way in which the reader’s mind works into these pages, including some of the insights from Jane Yellowlees-Douglas’s excellent book The Reader’s Brain (2015). However, we are ordinary teachers, just like you, and we have distilled our experiences and discoveries into the book that you’re holding. The words on these pages are informed by both triumph and disaster in the classroom, and we offer them in all humility, to guide you through all the unconvincing noise that’s out there about the way we teach writing in schools.

The Writing Book (2023) is available from all major book retailers and on the Bloomsbury Education website.

Short Story

Mrs Nethercott set her husband’s place at the table as she did every evening- with a place mat, a knife and fork and a white china plate. Then she set her children’s places.  First, she put a plate out for Betty- her eldest daughter, at the seat facing the window. Betty always liked to look out of the window when she was eating so she could see the red squirrels in the garden. Next, Mrs Nethercott set little George’s place. There was no plate for him- he was such a fussy eater and he’d only eat anything if it was served in his special blue bowl with a picture of a train on it. George loved trains.

Mrs Nethercott went back over to the stove and drained the vegetables, which had started to boil over. She mashed the potatoes and took the pork chops out of the oven, serving up her dinner on her own plate. She looked at the clock. This would’ve been the time that Mr Nethercott would usually come home. Sometimes he’d come in full of joy and energy- with a bunch of flowers he’d bought for her on the way home. Sometimes he’d have had a bad day and he’d be more gloomy; but he’d always find a smile for her even then.

There’d be no flowers today, of course, nor even a smile. Not anymore. Not since that fateful summer night during the battle for Britain’s skies. “It is with the deepest regret…” That was how the letter had begun. She’d known just from those six words and the RAF letterhead what it would say. Mrs Nethercott carried her solitary plate of food over to the table. She felt a raindrop on her shoulder and looked up at the hole in the ceiling and out to the sky above. She still couldn’t bear to get it fixed. The children’s bedroom used to be directly above the kitchen. They’d both been in there when the bomb hit.

Mrs Nethercott sat down with her dinner and, as she had done every evening for the last two years, she ate alone.

Setting Descriptions

Into the Rainforest

Struck by awe and wonder, I stepped forward into the foliage. Here and there, sunbeams cut through occasional gaps in the trees high above: wraithlike blades of otherworldly light thrust into the forest floor. My eyes had now fully adapted to this ethereal dimness and yet, as I beheld the scene before me, I could still scarcely process the rich tapestry of colours and textures woven by the myriad life of the rainforest. The feel of the light, misty rain on my skin was refreshing given the humid warmth of my surroundings. The air was thick and close but it carried a subtle and complex perfume: an ever-changing blend of a thousand exotic flowers.

I was flanked on either side by thick Aphelandra shrubs. At first they appeared to be a homogenous mass of green but, on closer inspection, I could see all the wonder of nature etched on the plants in intricate detail. Beads of moisture balanced delicately on the edges of their sharp, waxy leaves; they caught the narrow shafts of sunlight and illuminated the web-like patterns formed by the plant’s complex network of veins.

Moments later, my attention was snatched suddenly from what lay immediately beside me by a strange, high-pitched noise high in the trees. The call of a bird, I assumed, or perhaps some sort of climbing mammal. I listened closely and, as the sound abated, I started to pay close attention to everything else I could hear: the stridulating of the crickets, the chirruping of the tree frogs and the intermittent cheeping of birds all contributed to the rainforest’s remarkable natural choir.

As I revelled in those thoughts, a macaw leapt forth from a branch high in the canopy and soared majestically through the relatively open space of the understorey. I was captivated both by the grace of its movement and the bright colours of its plumage: its body was a brilliant shade of crimson and its wings were striped in yellow and blue. Above my head a furry sloth slowly raised its head watched the gliding bird uncertainly, its beady black eyes following its path intently for a moment before losing interest.

Ruins of an Ancient City

I step gingerly up the wide, uneven steps. They dip in the middle, the silvery rock apparently worn down over centuries by the relentless footfall of ancient people. Vines and creepers encroach on the stairs from the sides: their gradual invasion a natural reminder that whoever was here once is here no more- long gone now; long forgotten; long dead.

I emerge into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by imposing buildings- all the same silvery grey as the stairs I’ve just ascended. For a moment, I fancy that I can see movement at one of the windows but I know that’s impossible. An eerie silence permeates the city as if the whole world were paying its respects to the fallen greatness of an extinct civilisation. At my feet, ancient columns and fragments litter the floor- clues from the past unreadable to me but perhaps of interest to archaeologists. In the centre of the courtyard stands an old, weathered statue. Perhaps this is a great ruler from the city’s past or even a God its people once worshipped. There is no one left to ask. Its narrow eyes stare at me, as if judging me for trespassing.

Streets lined with similar, though smaller buildings, snake off this central courtyard in every direction. At the far end of the city a formidable pyramid dominates the former settlement, crowned by a temple just visible through the ghostly mist that shrouds its summit. As I resolve to explore the pyramid and begin to set off in its direction, I am stopped in my tracks by a noise- not close but not far away. It sounds like a metallic object crashing to the floor. Perhaps I’m not alone after all…

When and how should schools return?

Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 are the right place to start…but 1st June is too soon for most schools.

The question of how and when to reopen schools in England isn’t an easy one. Inevitably, it’s descending into a rigid polarised debate between two factions. In one corner, there are right-wing politicians and their cheerleaders in the press, desperate to see children return to the classroom at the earliest opportunity and understandably eager to see the economy begin to recover. In the other corner, there’s a vocal group of teachers and headteachers, backed by their unions, equally understandably concerned about the safety implications.

Recent history is the enemy of healthy dialogue here. Conservative politicians and the British press rarely try to hide their disdain for teachers and, in turn, most teachers have learnt to mistrust the government. Parents, it seems are divided. Many are desperate to offload their children so they can get back to work while many others don’t think it’s worth the risk. A clear and logical national strategy is needed on a question where compromise seems all too difficult to reach.

The last few weeks have highlighted the sort of inconsistency that results from a lack of national coordination. Some children have received an impressive offer of remote learning, put together quickly and innovatively by their teachers. Many other children, we must acknowledge, haven’t. This isn’t always, or even usually, because schools have been unwilling- in many cases they simply lack the expertise or technological capability. Even for those children whose schools have been able to teach them in their own homes, there’s no comparison between this provision and what is possible in school.

In addition, of course, there’s the issue of supervision. Childcare isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) the school system’s primary function but it is an essential secondary one. The economic cost of parents unable to work due to childcare commitments is real and the biggest victims of economic carnage always seem to be the poorest and most vulnerable. For all these reasons, everyone from Daily Mail headline writers to the leaders of the education unions would agree that schools need to return as soon as it is safe for them to do so. And here is the problem. How safe is safe enough?

Firstly, let’s clear a few things up on both sides of this debate. The risk posed by the Coronavirus to primary school children does not appear to be statistically significant enough to justify closing schools on that basis alone. That sounds callous and you might be convinced by the response: “one child being at risk is too many”. This sounds worthy but it’s sanctimonious nonsense. You can never protect the entire population of school children from contracting infections right across the country and that’s not a reasonable condition to place on the reopening of schools. The risk posed to children at school or anywhere else can never be 0% and it never has been- that’s why we have risk assessments.

However, before I get accused of siding with the Daily Mail, let me also stress that this is only part of the picture. We still don’t know enough about how the virus spreads between children, sometimes asymptomatically. It is therefore a reasonable assumption that all households sending their children to the same school, many of which will include elderly and vulnerable relatives, will be open to infection from one another.

I teach Year 6 and I don’t want my pupils’ primary school days to end at home in front of a computer screen. However, I also work in a well-resourced independent school and we are far better-equipped than most state primaries would be to keep our pupils spread out. I’m not even going to indulge the notion that most schools can practise proper social distancing with children in Reception and Year 1- of course they can’t.

For this reason, it doesn’t make sense to open schools until the virus is brought properly under control and new infections are close to zero. This is how some of our neighbours, such as Denmark, have managed to get children back to school. However, unlike the UK, Denmark contained its outbreak effectively in the early stages and we are not in the same place. It doesn’t seem realistic from the current numbers to think that new infections will be anywhere near to zero in England by 1st June.

I can see the logic in partially reopening schools a couple of weeks before the Summer holiday. It would give ministers, scientists and health professionals the chance to properly assess the effects of reopening schools during a short window after which they would close again for several weeks anyway. I also think the government have chosen the correct year groups to start with. Reception and Year 1 children are the hardest to reach remotely and vulnerable children in those year groups are probably most at risk. Transitions matter and giving Year 6 children the chance to say a proper goodbye to their primary school years is something I’ve always felt is tremendously important.

The government should abandon its ambition to fully re-open schools this side of the summer holiday. Many schools have staff members who are particularly vulnerable to the virus or live with people who are. Schools can only cater for a full complement of pupils if they can be fully-staffed. A far better plan for the government would be to focus all its energy on containing and controlling the virus during June. They can re-open schools for Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 when new infections are negligible, with a view to collecting data and aiming to reopen in full in September. If such a compromise could be reached, I’d encourage teachers and our unions to try and work with it.

Sorry, Folks. Teaching Grammar Doesn’t Stifle Creativity

The idea that teaching grammar stifles creativity is a damaging myth, made all too believable by the DfE’s daft testing regime.

“Teaching grammar stifles children’s creativity.”

“Instead of teaching grammar, we should teach children to write imaginatively and creatively.”

The truth of these two statements is accepted by many people, both inside and outside of the current British primary education system. I’ve come dangerously close to expressing such views myself in the past. However, I have come to believe that the first statement is flat-out wrong and, because the first statement is wrong, the second statement is illogical.

What teachers too often mean when they say “teaching grammar stifles children’s creativity” is “I don’t know how to make teaching grammar fun” or possibly even “I don’t know how to teach grammar at all.” Understanding how our language works equips children to use it in a richer variety of ways. It enables them to rearrange and reword sentences to create different effects and suit different registers. It encourages them to play with the conventions of language to give their writing precision and nuance. It empowers them, when communicating their ideas and sharing the contents of their imaginations, to do so in vivid technicolour. Of course, teaching children about grammar in this way is not the same as simply preparing them for the Year 6 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Test and here an important distinction must be made. The testing regime in primary schools has impoverished the English curriculum and it continues to do so but that is not a valid argument against teaching children about grammar.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this question: when teachers tell us that teaching grammar stifles creativity, what do they generally advocate doing instead? Often, the answer is a genre-focused writing task based on a book they’ve read, e.g. write a diary entry for the Big Bad Wolf, write a news report about the events of The Highwayman, write in role as Jim Jarvis from Street Child. Now, please don’t misunderstand me: there is absolutely a time and a place for these sorts of activities…but do they really represent a gold standard in fostering creativity and encouraging children to be imaginative? To be done well, they usually require extensive modelling from the teacher and clear success criteria that set out the “correct” way to achieve the objective. Yes, they often require the children to engage initially with a well-written text but a well-taught grammar lesson would do this too. In fact, these tasks often require more creativity and imagination on the part of the teacher than they do from the pupil and here I think there is an awkward truth to confront. When some teachers suggest that genre-focused writing tasks are more enjoyable and creative for the children than well-delivered grammar activities, what they actually mean is that they’re more enjoyable and creative for them. The two things are not always the same.

Compare these genre-focused tasks to a very simple grammar starter activity: writing a main clause on the board and asking children to suggest a subordinate clause that could be added to it. This is boring, right? It stifles creativity and makes school dull, surely? Try it and watch what happens. The children will want to make their sentences funny. They’ll want to write sentences about the topics that interest them. They’ll make the task their own and they’ll express themselves because that’s what children do. In fact, they’ll express themselves far more thoroughly than they ever could by writing a report about The Highwayman. The sentences they write will be theirs- from them and by them.

Teaching grammar properly means teaching children how to say exactly what they want to say- it gives them the tools to communicate what’s on their minds and express what’s in their hearts. Because most of us were taught little to no grammar when we were at school ourselves, it requires us as teachers to demonstrate the sort of open-minded engagement with new learning that we expect of our pupils every day. It requires a shift in mindset and, yes, it can be quite difficult. However, none of that is altered by pretending that teaching grammar stifles creativity. When we continue to peddle this myth, we merely betray the limits of our own imaginations.

Doors of Perception: how our approach to lesson observations is harmed by our childish attitudes to classroom doors

One of the biggest dilemmas facing school leaders surrounds how best to scrutinise the teaching in their school. Some prefer to conduct long but infreqeuent scheduled observations. This means that teachers are forewarned that someone will be coming to watch their lesson and they’re able to “pull out all the stops.” The potential drawbacks here are obvious: teachers who are able to “put on a show” for one hour a year may come out of such a process looking better than those who continue at their usual reliable but steady level of effectiveness throughout the process. It may tell observers little about what “normally happens” in that classroom and potentially rewards the wrong things. At the other end of the scale, some school leaders prefer a policy of regular unannounced drop-ins. Each visit feels less individually significant but it can create a strange workplace culture- making teachers feel like naughty children who might have their antics checked by the “grown-ups” in SLT at any moment. In most schools I’ve encountered during my career, getting this balance right has proved a challenge.

I think the solution is very simple. Studies in transactional analysis suggest that healthy workplace relationships involve colleagues interacting with one another on an “adult to adult” basis. Whenever these relationships start to resemble a “parent to child” dynamic, the seeds of resentment, defiance and alienation are sewn. Because most school leaders start out as teachers, they can sometimes get this very wrong when they become managers- I certainly didn’t always get it right when I was a deputy head. I’m now back in middle leadership as an English subject leader so I’m a class teacher myself but I also have a responsibility to know what’s going on in all the other classes in the school. This means I have an interest in enabling a strong culture of peer-to-peer observation, as well as enabling those with leadership roles to gather evidence about their area of responsibility. However, I also have a rank-and-file class teacher’s perspective on things. Pondering these different priorities has led me to what I think is quite a good idea. Here goes.

Imagine that a school adopted this simple five-point policy on classroom observations:

1.) Observations of teaching are short but frequent
2.) All teachers are encouraged to watch one another (including those with less experience and seniority watching those with more.)
3.) Anyone can drop in unannounced and watch what’s going on in a lesson if the door is open.
4.) Whenever a teacher doesn’t wish to be observed, they can close their classroom door.
5.) Teachers are encouraged to keep their classroom doors open more often than not.

Why does it need to be any more complicated than that? The first of my five points will discourage set-piece firework display lessons designed only to an impress an observer. The second point emphasises that lesson observations are primarily a stimulus for dialogue between teaching professionals for their mutual benefit and development. The third and fourth points ensure that if a teacher is trying to deal with a sensitive problem or wants to try out a new idea without knowing how it will go or is even just having a an unusually bad day, they’re given the space and professional respect they need. The fifth point ensures that teachers can’t use the fourth point to take the piss.

I guarantee that the vast majority of teachers would respond to this policy by keeping their doors open the vast majority of the time, yet the culture of fear that stalks many schools in many teachers’ minds would be neutralised by the reassurance that they can close the door whenever they need to. Not just senior leaders and subject leaders, but all teachers could drop in and out of each other’s classrooms and discussions about learning would become more authentic. Pedagogical conversations would be based on what everyone knew was really happening in the school, not on teachers trying to make themselves sound impressive or avoid being “found out.” Of course, there might be the odd teacher every now and then who would keep their door resolutely shut and a conversation might have to be had about that. Schools would probably also need a more robust policy when it came to teachers who were clearly underperforming. However, the goal for most of the teachers in a school should surely  be to create a collegiate “adult-to-adult” culture of shared professional support and dialogue.

I don’t think this issue is as difficult as many school leaders think. We just need to open our minds and, at least for a majority of the time, our doors.