TR&W Issue 20

www.teachwire.net | 57 Chris Youles is the author of the bestselling books Sentence Models for Creative Writing and Teaching Story Writing in Primary . A classroom teacher with 19 years of experience, he has been an assistant head, English lead, writing moderator and a specialist leader in education. once: surveying, maniacal and withering. That’s impressive facial mobility for a ‘decrepit’ man. The old man gave the boy a withering look. This does the job. ‘The old man’ defines the subject (we could describe him more if he were an important character). I wanted the boy to be intimidated and to feel small, and the ‘withering look’ does this job. It won’t win the Booker Prize, but it’s simple and effective. We need to model this sort of discussion about language choices in class. This will help create writers who are discerning in their vocabulary choices, and who put purpose at the forefront of their vocabulary decisions. ‘Wow words’ and vocab One of the most common pieces of feedback I’ve seen in pupils’ English books is to up-level their vocabulary – adding more detail or inserting a ‘wow’ word. To children, though, this tends to mean grabbing a thesaurus and replacing it with a word that they’ve never heard of, impressing their teacher and their peers with their newfound lexical powers. So, how should we improve pupils’ vocabulary if we do not use a thesaurus? To start, I would use bespoke word lists. Create two lists: one for all the key vocabulary they’ll need for the story they’re writing; one for the additional words that will push their writing on, with ambitious choices for the key scenes in the story. Building a bespoke word list Recently, my class has been writing their own versions of the ancient Greek myth Perseus and the Gorgons . Before we began, I wrote up the vocabulary that lists the BUILDING A BESPOKE WORD LIST When compiling your vocabulary, list nouns first, verbs second and adjectives third. This doesn’t presume a level of importance to the word types, but encourages pupils to start with precise nouns rather than weak adjectives. For example, ‘Medusa’s long, pointy, scratchy fingers’ can be replaced with ‘Medusa’s talons’. Next, we have verbs, because we want to create dynamism and action in our scene. Writing in the active voice will always be more powerful for narrative, and using a verb with a noun can achieve this. Adjectives can add a shade of meaning that enhances the noun. The adjectives should not be doing the heavy lifting here. ‘Medusa had revolting, mouldy snakes on her head’ is not as effective as ‘Medusa’s head was a nest of writhing snakes’. Adjectives should be used precisely. ‘Medusa’s stony eyes searched for Perseus’ is far more effective than ‘Medusa had disgusting eyes’. If appropriate, I also build a short list of adverbs that could be used, but only if they enhance the image. ‘Medusa evilly stared at Perseus’ is better with a more precise verb choice: ‘Medusa observed Perseus with her stony eyes.’ The key here in these discussions you will have with your pupils is that there is never one correct answer. This rich discussion when choosing our words is essential to improving writing. main character names, key locations and any other words related to the story, e.g. Perseus, Gorgon (Medusa), King Acrisius (King of Argos), Danae, King Polydectes, etc. This gave the children every opportunity to get the names right. I’ve seen lists like this given out as spelling homework before, but I believe we should focus spelling on words that could be applied in multiple contexts. Now that the basic story-related words have been dealt with, we must think about the more ambitious words we want to teach. For this, I create a bespoke word list, in table format (see Table 1.). You can make a single list for the whole story, or pick out key scenes and produce separate word lists for each one. Place the word types on the left, and then set out the subjects in columns. In this example I have used a single subject, but you could have up to five or six. The columns can then be subdivided further to focus on specific aspects of a subject. Discuss and finalise your word selections with the class – I’ve given an example of this process in the panel. These word lists give pupils a precise set to choose from. The lists can also teach pupils new words and extend their writing vocabulary. T E ACH I NG T E CHN I QUE S Table 1. A bespoke word list MEDUSA Hair Body Eyes Nouns serpents snakes reptiles tongue(s) skin claws talons wings pupils irises Verbs writhe hiss flick snap slither wriggle scrape extend stare pierce scan observe Adjectives venomous poisonous deadly forked serpentine leathery scaly grey pale stony green red purple heartless