Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

30 | www.teachwire.net become how could doing this outdoors enhance writing? Here’s an outline of what we did, with some suggestions of how you might adapt our ideas for your setting. Instructions We made hot chocolate and cooked Welsh cakes on small wood-fired stoves. As the participants produced these treats, I took photos of each step and scribed the language I heard used. You could audio- or video-record this instead, of course. These activities demanded the use of precise technical nouns and imperative verbs: spatula rather than spoon; fry, boil, or sear rather than cook. The photos could be sequenced later to give the text-type ‘shape’ of instructions using the vocabulary bank already gathered. You could instead: Look at the free resources produced by Wildlife Watch ( wildlifewatch. org.uk/activities ) and make bird feeders or brew dandelion tea. I ’m willing to bet that, when you think back to your schooldays, it will probably be time spent outside or on practical subjects that have stuck in your memory. Evidence points to the positive impact of learning outside, and writing experts confirm what a teacher’s ‘gut’ tells them: that offering children rich, creative, practical experiences will improve knowledge, enjoyment, motivation and writing. James Clements in On the Write Track (Routledge, 2023) tells us, ‘There are few things in education more valuable for children’s learning than ensuring they have first-hand experiences’ and the Writing for Pleasure Centre (which promotes research-informed writing teaching) says that children write ‘because they are moved to’. So, what might all this advice look like in practice then? My outdoor education adviser colleague and I put our bobble-hatted heads together and dreamed up a new training course. On a bright, crisp day just before Christmas, a group of warmly wrapped-up teachers joined us in the historic setting of Buckden Towers, near Huntingdon. Together we explored how they might use outdoor areas and experiences to stimulate a range of writing activities. We hoped that by the end of the day we’d have produced a gentle mind-shift: that folks’ default setting would Descriptions Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination work on projects with artists in the outdoors. One of their wonderful ideas is Fantastical Maps ( cambridgecandi.org.uk/ resource/fantastical-maps ) where children re-map an actual outdoor landscape with their own creative ideas. We transformed a map of Buckden Towers into a series of magical spaces that were home to mystical animals. We stretched our metaphors and similes in a quest to exactly annotate/ describe our ideas. You could also: Use props from the PE shed, set up an ‘island’ with ‘landmarks’. Each prop is then mapped, reimagined and described Poetry We built micro-fires and, as we lovingly tended these, wrote ‘long and short’ poems, inspired by Michael Rosen’s book What is Poetry? To paraphrase Michael’s idea, you divide the group into ‘shorts’ (who can only describe what they saw or felt with one or two words) and ‘longs’ (who are allowed five to seven words). You then arrange the ideas as you OUTSIDE Take it Want to inspire and support your pupils to write? Get outdoors and try these practical activities, says Kathryn Brereton