BIG thanks for your contributions @one_to_read @lit4pleasure @lynseyhunter @smerchant13 @Marcelavb3 @TobiasHayden @AmandaMurkett

For the first half hour of the chat, we watched the following video – Penny Kittle interviews Donald Graves.

• “It’s about the process not the product” Could someone get this inscribed on every classroom door please???
• “When the teacher writes on something they’ve chosen – it shows their class that they care about their piece and kids see what writing is for.” – Donald Graves
• Snap
• I love that as a child he thought he could write well because him and his friend were ‘kids writing for others kids’. How often do the children in our classes get to write for other kids?
• ‘The greatest saver of time is when children can write on a topic that means something to them’. – Donald Graves
• Interesting that writers need a reassuringly consistent routine & discipline. – Do we ensure that children get to write meaningfully everyday? – How lucky are the kids in our class going to be thinking about their writing when they are away from the classroom?
• likely*
• Intertextuality there – how does what *you’re* reading bleed into *your* writing….!
• You don’t always have to write in front of your class. You can write and show it to them later.
• “Imagine the school where the children moved from grade level to grade level and they had a different writer as their teacher” My good lord what an education system that would be. Worthy of Utopia.
• I’d go back to school!
• I love it that I’m helping -for a little while – for this to happen (in part) for kids when they write in my class.
• I want someone to make Donald Graves a Saint.
• “Finally someone saw the voice in the garbage” What we all need and need to do.
• Such a brilliant quote.
• ‘The teacher needs to be reading and writing…that’s what has the greatest effect on the classroom. It’s not a methodology. It’s a life.
• I was struck by many things – time away from the computer to write was one of them. The equitable approach is right but tricky to facilitate. I hold conferences on writing with children weekly; I will use the phrase ‘writer to writer’ more now.
• “The real challenge for teachers is nurturing all those different writing habits in the classroom”
• Personally, I find this easier when I recognise the chn, their writing processes and outcomes as unique entities rather than expecting something uniform. When we are authentically engaged in different stages of the process we’re all in a better position to support one another.
• “In my books I say to teachers “write with your students” and no one does. I know that!” Well I do Donald!!!!!!!
• So do I, alongside any other adults who may be in the room.
• I also find it powerful to encourage teachers to do so when leading writing CPD.
• “Teaching is about showing not telling”. Amen.
• I think you may approve of question 3.
• I wonder if Donald Grave’s would have engaged with what became his life’s work if his teacher hadn’t taken his desire to be a writer seriously?
• It may have been significant that he felt ‘not laughed at’ and ideas were allowed to come to him. Now going to watch the second half.
• When it comes to composition, I can identify with someone ‘controlling my time’ being a barrier to creativity. Conversely, I feel like most like a writer when I’m weaving everything together hours before a deadline i.e. when someone is controlling my time.
• This bit really struck me; the idea that it was when someone else controlled the time that he couldn’t write. The implications of this in school are huge.
• And when the place was controlled – place was important too.
• This is your next staff meeting right here!
• Awesome! There’s my Friday night viewing.
• 20 odd minutes of shouting ‘Yes!’ at the screen.
• Agreed
• ‘The teacher needs to be reading AND writing … It’s never a methodology, it’s a life.’ From my experience, most teachers are sold on the former and passionately covey their love of reading & books. Writing amongst & conferencing with your class is truly powerful.

Question 1

• That their voices matter. THAT THEIR VOICES MATTER! Sorry, I’m so passionate about this. I actually feel rather emotional.
• Children love to write when they get to share their meaning.
• Too blooming right. How often does the teacher shut down *their* meaning to reframe it in something that is adult led????
• Or require them to write in silence for long long long periods of time. This one breaks my heart.
• It can sometimes be so hard to write alone! I need to vibe off people – see what they think – take on their suggestions – negotiate over the text…
• There’s a lot of rubbish said and done about writing.
• I’ve been reminded of how much more children sometimes think and create than they show in what they physically write.
• I’d also say that the talk children participate in as they craft texts together is far more productive than we give them credit for.
• Gosh, yes – key part of the process for many of our pupils.
• To see children as individuals who have something to teach us too, to communicate to us. To understand that they have different ways to approach writing and they need space to develop and choose the best way that suits them. To accept that this might change too.
• I did this today! I realised I don’t do it enough and that children thrive if they select everything they need and are given freedom and space to think. One child picked up a garden spade from the corner (don’t ask) and his resulting writing was astonishing.
• There are trends which ripple around the classroom. Some children like to write like their mates. When they find a type of writing they love, sometimes a child can write dozens, maybe scores of pieces in the same series/style/genre etc.
• Chn adapt to the environment, inc expectations, pretty quickly. i.e. If everyone is writing, they write. If everyone is using the same tools, they use them too. If they know someone will ‘rescue’ them, they let them. I’m interested how they make writerly choices.
• I think what he means here is that you take on the behaviours of the ‘literacy club’ you participate in. You’ll pick up on their ways of being and doing – and then make them your own.
• This may inc reading their writing aloud to themselves & / or others, using scaffolds in the classroom to edit vocabulary for precision of meaning, talking through their ideas, saying “I’m stuck” but I’ll have a go anyway because then I’ll have something to work on.

Question 2

• When I have a project I care about in my head. Sometimes it actually becomes quite painful (physiologically) because it sticks like some kind of ear worm in writing form.
• In fact I might write a little pamphlet: “The Bogus Myths about Teaching Writing”. Anyone care to join me?
• How could I resist a title like that?
• Come on then!
  • Writing is easier for adults than it is for children.
  • You can do a page in half an hour.
  • Beginning + middle + end = done.
  • If you’ve got a plan then everything is easier.
  • Story = mountain.
  • If we feed them the content, vocabulary and structure children will be able to make their own writing out of our wisdom.
• It’s not a pamphlet…more a tract in multiple volumes.
• When talking with my friends too…!! I’ve got into an awful habit of talking about things with pals – knowing that it’s a topic I want to write about. In the process, I’m generating ideas (and even forming a plan) …sorry any friends reading this!
• Still thinking about this one and how I write – experiences, feelings, memories, observations, people, places and spaces are kind of jiggled about in my head way before I put pen to paper or type. Do we give pupils enough of these things?
• Meaning ‘jiggling’ time and space to think about experience and, as Donald Graves said ‘self-expression’.
• Making connections is a beautiful thing. I think it’s probably the single easiest idea generation technique. It’s virtually impossible not to get a bucket load of writing topics from a class of children when reading together. You can’t stop them!
• Showering, running, washing up, while I’m doing almost anything else (if it’s a ‘hot topic’), driving, being on playground duty, cleaning the bathroom, hoovering, taking out the rubbish, looking out from my balcony, lying next to my sleeping baby.
• Yes!
• It’s an ‘on going’ status, composing writing thoughts catch me, everywhere and almost all the time! And when I least expect!

Question 3

• I find it a difficult life. I show it’s a difficult life. To put into words exactly what you are feeling and thinking is a virtual impossibility. Words are not in any way enough.
• That’s why writers keep writing if they’re in any way “good” writers: to find the best way (and it still won’t be enough) to express the inexpressible inside themselves. And probably to know themselves well enough too…
• The best writing always comes from something someone cares about. Today, my writing group used @KateClanchy1’s Grow Your Own Poem and wrote about a series of objects being placed on a table but in their own way/form – their choice. Their work showed me so much and show is the key. Some kept literal and others slid into the abstract. You could see such authenticity and expression.
• @KateClanchy1 is a legend.
• Seriously so – today’s work was amazing. I did tell her!
• This is great.
• Sharing all of this:
  • my notebooks, post its & how I return to pieces;
  • where I think best = walking, swimming, whilst talking;
  • where I write best = train, bed, with others; . what I use to help me.
  • I find myself saying: “I’m doing / trying this because…”
• I try to show the collaborative nature of the whole thing. Social in a sense.  @Marcelavb3 and I are sharing more and more between our classes. Ideas for examples of practice are just falling into our laps. It’s a highly dialogic exchange. Ideas, opinions, feedback.
• Writer-teachers can’t help but develop their apprentice writers. It cannot not happen. It’s the biggest leap you can make as a teacher of writing. But it seldom happens. Why? You do get better at it though. Truly a craft to be mastered over time. A long time.
• But even the first day you do it and feel what it’s like and the kids see you struggle, you’ve already won 90% of the battle.
• 100%. So powerful. Be vulnerable. Change the world together through writing. How about that for an aim at the start of the year?
• If they know their voice is worth recording then anything is possible.
• You can see it in their eyes: ‘We’re all in this together’. The reciprocity of having skin in the game is powerful as you are publicly committing to giving something your best shot and you become more skilled at supporting the children’s writing processes.
• So I’ll take your answer as mine and I second every word!
• It’s important to show the children that you are too part of a community of writers, and that your engagement expands further than the confines of the classroom.

Next month we will be featuring the first of a series of teachers’ Examples of Practice that have been shared on the Writing for Pleasure Centre website.

You can read Creating a Writing for Pleasure Pedagogy: One Teacher’s Practice by Tobias Hayden here.  We will be discussing this in our next  chat on Wednesday 4^th November 2020 at 8pm GMT.