As demonstrated in the below link to a news report, inviting authors into schools can have a big impact upon the way they view both reading, writing and raise the profile of literacy in general.
We were lucky enough to arrange for the award winning author Jamie Thompson to visit both our Year 6 class and the Year 5 class within the school free of charge. Jamie's best selling children's novel 'Dark Lord: The Teenage years' is an engaging and imaginative story that tells the tale of a terrifying tyrant being cast down into the body of a 12 year old boy in modern Surrey. With wit and energy, Jamie writes in a way that reaches reluctant readers particularly boys with gory and silly humour (which we have many of within our class!).
Jamie began by setting the scene in his novel by engaging the children with props and power-point slides showing the incredibly detailed illustrations contained within the book. He then taught the children how to talk like a 'Dark Lord'; casting spells on enemies, controlling minions and ruling their domains. The children took to this very easily, coming up with very inventive and imaginative figurative language while retaining the humour of the text.
The class were then encouraged to discuss a scene setting for their own class novel, ideas such as inside a giant pork pie, heaven and the Earth's core were amongst the shortlist before they settled on the underworld. Next, the class came up with characters that could be involved within their story and considered the relationship between them. Throughout the process Jamie encouraged their 'Talk for Writing' by pushing for bigger and better ideas, turning their suggestions into a complex and detailed plot. This benefitted the children's understanding of how an author's mind works whilst writing and getting across the message that story development doesn't always involve draft after draft of the whole story.
Next the Year 5 class had their opportunity to become a 'Dark Lord' and create their own story based in 'Doggy puppy land' (a stark contrast to our gory Year 6's!). After which, the Year 5 class teacher thanked us for organising Jamie's visit to the school and expressed her gratitude for the impact we have had on Year 6 writing and the way this has fed down through the school. She commented that many of the strategies we had introduced were discussed within staff meetings, some of which she had used herself.
This big finish really stressed the whole message of our project:
Good writers read widely, recognise good
writing, and understand what makes it good. (National Strategies, 2008)
Hopefully this message has been stressed enough throughout the past 6 months and it has made an impact upon the way the children now view writing.
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