TR&W Issue 20

WR I T I NG AS A CRAFT Writer-orientated themes l The writing process – idea generation, planning, drafting, editing, proofreading, publishing. l Being an author – living the writer’s life, writerly habits. Text-orientated themes l Text-level choices – general knowledge. l Language choices – composition, sentence- and word-level choices, grammar and punctuation selection. l The reader-writer relationship – knowledge of writing purpose, being able to link language choices to have the intended effect on the reader. 48 | www.teachwire.net Ellen Counter is a primary English teaching and learning adviser at HFL Education. @EllenCounter @HertsEnglish HfLPrimaryEnglish often leads to writing being skewed towards box-ticking of grammar terms and punctuation (sometimes leaving out the craft of composition entirely). Consequently, in many classrooms, the authentic craft of writing remains a mystery to all involved. However, within its aims, the national curriculum does emphasise the importance of an awareness of purpose and audience. There are various suggestions for a range of writing purposes, but we could broadly categorise them as writing to: entertain, inform, persuade, discuss. Michael Tidd has previously blogged about his approach to devising a writing curriculum using these four writing purposes ( tinyurl.com/tp-Purpose ) . Of course, these can overlap, but there is usually an overriding one at play. Carefully constructed writing curriculums should support children in building an understanding of writing for different purposes, and enable them to connect with their audience as a writer, and provide them with opportunities to make choices about their writing. When pupils start to notice that different writers use similar writerly techniques according to their writing purpose, they can start to build writing schemas alongside a developing understanding of genre knowledge. For example, pupils can observe that when writing to persuade, we often: • Use ‘you’ to put the reader on the spot and make them think about what we are saying or asking. • Use carefully-selected facts to support our opinions. • Sometimes use rhetorical questions to make the reader think more deeply about a subject. • Sometimes use emotion or exaggeration to make a point more memorable or emotive. When they notice that writers often use adverts, letters, posters or reviews when writing to persuade, pupils will be able to match appropriate persuasive devices and genres for their writing purpose. ( See tinyurl. com/tp-LanguageChoices for an illustrated example). Putting it into practice Curriculum design should therefore be carefully crafted to allow children to recognise that their language choices do not exist in a vacuum, and they can return to their knowledge of writing purpose to transfer this into different contexts (such as a variety of genres) and make links to any new learning. Not only within English lessons, but across the curriculum, with conscious control and choice. Of course, we need to combine an understanding of both the cognitive and emotional demands that are placed on children when they are learning to write. Both domains must inform our decisions when creating any sort of writing curriculum within schools. We must include children in the decision-making concerning their writing – making writing an enjoyable experience for them along with feeling a sense of satisfaction in their own high-quality creations (Young & Ferguson, 2021). As Michael Rosen states in his book Did I Hear You Write? (1989, p. 43): ‘…language Juliet McCullion is a primary English teaching and learning adviser at HFL Education. @JulietTeaching @HertsEnglish facebook.com/HfLPrimaryEnglish doesn’t have to seem like A Thing; something that doesn’t belong to you; or something that isn’t part of how you think. Rather, it is a way of thinking you can control’. TP