Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

www.teachwire.net | 31 Kathryn Brereton has taught pupils across the primary age range and in a secondary school inclusion unit. She has also taught on creative writing courses for adults and is now an English Adviser for Cambridgeshire County Council. please into two shorts and one long, for example: Flames flicker, sparks soar, Smoke spirals skywards in gentle clouds. You could also: Ask a pair of pupils to select a card on which is written an adjective (for example, gnarled or blossoming ). Give the children ten minutes to photograph as many objects as possible linked to that adjective. Let them choose their favourite and write a descriptive sentence that incorporates the adjective on a sticky note. Everyone’s notes can then be assembled to produce a collaborative poem. Persuasion We used apple-presses to make delicious juice. As they worked, I gave each pair of teachers a label and challenged them to name and describe their product as if they were going to pitch it ‘Dragon’s Den’-style. A short task, in terms of number of words written, but a powerful one, considering how each word must impact purpose and audience. You could instead: Make a ‘magic potion’ comprised of water and things found in the outdoor area. You could then market its ‘special powers’. Narrative As the late-afternoon light started to fade, I shared some evocative passages chosen to stimulate the listeners to draw on their surroundings and write a spooky story. Seven Ghosts or Freeze (both by Chris Priestly) lend themselves perfectly as inspiration. We played a few simple language games to get ideas and vocabulary flowing in a low-stakes manner, such as ‘I went to Buckden Towers and saw a…’ You could also: Dot some props around the setting: a key, an old teddy, a single shoe or perhaps a lantern. Texts that tempt Across the day, I shared several fiction and non-fiction texts through which outdoor writing activities could be threaded. The Tree and the River is a wordless picture book by Aaron Becker showing how a landscape changes over time. Children could imagine the same for their outdoor setting and write the accompanying text. In Run Wild by Gill Lewis, children stumble on a wolf living on local wasteland. The plot could easily be transposed to your own setting. I hope you’ve seen how, almost by stealth, the outdoor activities described can draw out the necessary components of effective creative writing. The teachers on our course told us that their creativity had been rejuvenated. Writing can indeed be a pleasurable, satisfying, purposeful experience. Perhaps we just need to make this clearer to our pupils. So, put on your big coat and get set for exciting times! T E ACH I NG T E CHN I QUE S @kat_brereton OUT AND ABOUT Think of outdoor learning as a teaching method in your toolkit, rather than a separate subject. As you plan a unit of writing, think how experiences outside might enhance the teaching and learning. What could be done through outside learning instead? Writing outside doesn’t have to be a full-scale, wellies-on affair. Try these ideas to get you started: find faces in trees and describe them; imagine your outdoor area is to be built upon – write a letter of complaint; describe a bird’s-eye view of an area. Use audio- and video- recording, or teacher scribing, to preserve the immersion in the activity whilst capturing the ideas and vocabulary. A dedicated Forest School area is not essential. I watched a class reimagine their Trim Trail equipment as jungle animals after reading Lollipop and Grandpa’s Back Garden Safari by Penelope Harper. Capitalise on ‘squirrel moments’ – when something unexpected happens in the outside world and captures children’s imagination. Provide each child with a scrapbook (or an ‘outdoor explorer/adventurer’s journal) and a large plastic bag (the ‘zipper’ kind works best). Here they can jot down snippets of language, or stick/collect treasures they’ve found, to serve as writing prompts back in the classroom. The National Curriculum Outdoors series by Lambert, Roberts and Waite (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a fantastic resource offering lesson plans for most subjects. There’s one book covering KS1 and separate books for each KS2 year group. “Think of outdoor learning as a teaching method in your toolkit, rather than a separate subject”