Thoughts on writing

When it comes to good writing, creativity is key. This week, I came across this poem which really struck a chord with me.

Once a little boy went to school.

He was quite a little boy.

And it was quite a big school.

But when the little boy

Found that he could go to his room

By walking right in from the door outside,

He was happy.

And the school did not seem

Quite so big any more.

One morning,

When the little boy had been in school a while,

The teacher said:

“Today we are going to make a picture.”

“Good!” thought the little boy.

He liked to make pictures.

He could make all kinds:

Lions and tigers,

Chickens and cows,

Trains and boats –And he took out his box of crayons

And began to draw.

But the teacher said:

“Wait! It is not time to begin!”

And she waited until everyone looked ready.

“Now,” said the teacher,

“We are going to make flowers.”

“Good!” thought the little boy,

He liked to make flowers,

And he began to make beautiful ones

With his pink and orange and blue crayons.

But the teacher said,

“Wait! And I will show you how.”

And she drew a flower on the blackboard.

It was red, with a green stem.

“There,” said the teacher.

“Now you may begin.”

The little boy looked at the teacher’s flower.

Then he looked at his own flower,

He liked his flower better than the teacher’s.

But he did not say this

,He just turned his paper over

And made a flower like the teacher’s.

It was red, with a green stem.

On another day,

When the little boy had opened

The door from the outside all by himself,

The teacher said,

“Today we are going to make something with clay.”

“Good!” thought the boy.

He liked clay.

He could make all kinds of things with clay:

Snakes and snowmen,

Elephants and mice,

Cars and trucks –And he began to pull and pinch

His ball of clay.

But the teacher said,

“Wait! And I will show you how.”

And she showed everyone how to make

One deep dish.

“There,” said the teacher.

“Now you may begin.”

The little boy looked at the teacher’s dish

Then he looked at his own.

He liked his dishes better than the teacher’s

But he did not say this,

He just rolled his clay into a big ball again,

And made a dish like the teacher’s.

It was a deep dish.

And pretty soon

The little boy learned to wait

And to watch,

And to make things just like the teacher.

And pretty soon

He didn’t make things of his own anymore.

Then it happened

That the little boy and his family

Moved to another house,

In another city,

And the little boy

Had to go to another school.

This school was even bigger

Than the other one,

And there was no door from the outside

Into his room.

He had to go up some big steps,

And walk down a long hall

To get to his room.

And the very first day

He was there, the teacher said,

“Today we are going to make a picture.”

“Good!” thought the little boy,

And he waited for the teacher

To tell him what to do

But the teacher didn’t say anything.

She just walked around the room.

When she came to the little boy,

She said, “Don’t you want to make a picture?”

“Yes,” said the little boy.

“What are we going to make?”

“I don’t know until you make it,” said the teacher.

“How shall I make it?” asked the little boy.

“Why, any way you like,” said the teacher.

“And any color?” asked the little boy.

“Any color,” said the teacher,

“If everyone made the same picture,

And used the same colors,

How would I know who made what,

“And which was which?”

“I don’t know,” said the little boy.

And he began to draw a flower.

It was red, with a green stem.

~ Helen E. Buckley

I’ll come back to this later.

In the new GCSE English Language specification, 25% of the final grade is made up of a 40 mark question which asks the candidate simply to describe a picture (which is provided) or write a story or part of a story on a given topic. When I am tutoring students, I spend a great deal of time on this question for two reasons:

1) It is worth A LOT of marks

2) Many of the students seem to be genuinely afraid of it.

On many occasions when I have asked students to do this for the first time, they have found it incredibly difficult and many have stopped after a paragraph, unsure of what to do next. When I have asked them what is holding them back, they often say that what is in their head “isn’t good enough” and so they would prefer to write nothing. Some of the younger students complain that I have not provided sentence starters like they do in school.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am a fan of sentence starters and mnemonics (as you will no doubt see in later posts in this blog!) I think that they can be incredibly useful in helping students to remember the assessment objectives for an exam.

But writing is NOT just for exams. It really isn’t.

The ability to write fluently and creatively is not only a joy, but also very empowering. It is an outlet for expressing oneself clearly to others. You can’t actually be WRONG as such, as writing is a form of individual expression and therefore should be experimental, creative and original. If every writer in the world wrote in exactly the same way using exactly the same tried and tested formulas, life would be very dull indeed. Think of your favourite book – I can guarantee that the writer was not using a tick list of “must-use” language techniques whilst writing it, so you shouldn’t either. The fact is that creativity and originality are the very traits which are awarded highly in the exams. This is why Helen Buckley’s poem is so poignant. If we do not allow children and young people ample opportunity for expressing their own unique creativity in writing, they will simply lose it and sadly this has been the case for many of the students I see. The good news though, is that it does not take much to get those creative juices flowing again.

So for now, forget about the exams and learn instead to enjoy writing. There will be plenty of time a few months before you sit an exam to learn how to answer the exam questions and there is much more to mastering a skill than learning how to pass an exam.

The quickest way to get creative is to start writing (A LOT!) In this blog, I will provide ample ideas for writing creatively. My suggestion is to approach these writing tasks in any way you see fit. Do not worry about what you “should” be writing: instead focus on what you want to write and the rest will come.

I will provide some examples of the tasks I am suggesting. Please don’t see these as “model answers” - after all, there is no such thing! They will generally be ideas that I have played around with alongside students I have tutored and simply represent one of many different interpretations of a task. I do know though that it is sometimes useful to see an example to gain ideas and increase confidence.

I hope you find it useful!

A NOTE ON GRAMMAR: When I am writing about writing, I may refer to aspects of grammar. There are many amazing resources out there which will explain grammatical or technical terms and explain how to use punctuation accurately.  My favourites are from the CGP range: https://www.cgpbooks.co.uk/secondary-books/gcse/english/spag