# data[].attributes.headline
Children's Books for Speech Therapy - Book Share Time

# data[].attributes.subject
Children's Books for Speech Therapy - Book Share Time

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Easily Find Great Children's Books for Speech and Language Development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find some of the best children's books for speech therapy. All books are compiled by a Speech Pathologist and grouped by language areas, speech sounds, themes and ages.

# data[].attributes.headline
Using Story Plots to Support Children’s Storytelling - Book Share Time

# data[].attributes.subject
Using Story Plots to Support Children’s Storytelling - Book Share Time

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
*This post contains affiliate links

Learning about story plots was a bit of a revelation for me. I know that sounds a bit silly. But I had never thought about the fact that there might only be a couple of basic story plots that most stories follow in some way or another; and how teaching children about these plot patterns could make storytelling easier for them.

I first learned about story plots while attending professional development on Talk for Writing. This narrative writing program has taken Western Australian schools by storm in the last couple of years, and some schools have seen some amazing results. While Talk for Writing was developed to be used by teachers as part of a whole school approach, I was able to take away some key points from the Talk for Writing training which I've added to my narrative intervention toolkit. One of which was, you guessed it, story plots!

In this post I will be:

outlining the most common story plot patterns

providing examples of books and stories with the described story plots

telling you why you should consider teaching story plots as part of your narrative intervention

A story plot outlines the sequence of events in a story, that is, what happened in the story and the order it happened in.

The most common story plot patterns

Christopher Booker wrote about the seven universal story plots that underpin all stories. Pie Corbett then made this concept child-friendly in his Talk for Writing program by outlining some simple plot patterns that children are likely to come across in their encounters with books and stories. Of course, there are many other story plots as well, but these tend to be the most common ones.

The main character has some sort of flaw which lands them into trouble. The story often ends with the character learning their lesson and changing their ways.

Character Flaw Examples:

Everything is well for the main character until a threat appears. The threat is difficult to defeat, but the character eventually overcomes it using their resourcefulness or a positive character trait (e.g. honesty, courage, kindness).

Conquering the Monster Examples:

The main character finds something valuable, interesting or important. But finding this object may lead to things going wrong. The character has to overcome the problems, sometimes by discarding the valuable item in some way.

Finding Tale Examples:

The main character goes on a quest or adventure. They usually go on this journey to complete a specific task. The character will face a series of challenges, trials or temptations which they will need to overcome to succeed and find their way back home.

Journey Tale Examples:

The story starts with the main character having a valuable item. The character loses the precious item and has to either search for it or face the consequences of losing it. The story may end with the valuable item being found again.

Losing Tale Examples:

The main character meets someone or something which leads to a dilemma. The main character might have to look after this new acquaintance or keep them a secret. Alternatively, the two characters might argue and go their separate ways. But something terrible happens to one of them. Luckily the other character helps them, and they are able to overcome their differences and be friends.

Meeting Tale Examples:

The main character feels upset or mistreated because of the situation they are in at the beginning of the story. The character overcomes their difficulties and is often transformed in some way. This transformation can include either appearance, personality or opinions.

Rags to Riches Examples:

The story contains a very strong repetitive pattern. This pattern is often found in popular children's books and fairytales.

Repetitive Tale Examples:

The main character is afraid of something and encounters a situation in which they have to face their fear. After some difficulty, the character is eventually able to conquer their fear.

Tale of Fear Examples:

The main character is warned not to do something, but they ignore the warning and do it anyway. Something goes wrong which lands the character in trouble. The character is eventually rescued and (hopefully) learns their lesson!

Warning Tale Examples:

The main character wants something badly but is prevented by some sort of barrier that needs to be overcome. Once this is overcome the character gets what they wished for, but sometimes their desire was not worth it after all! Variation of a wishing tale: the main character is granted a wish, but ends up wasting it.

Wishing Tale Examples:

You can use Book Share Time's story plot filter to find more books that fit with the above story plot patterns.

Now, most stories don't fit neatly into these story plot descriptions as they are usually a combination of lots of different plots all mixed together. But, teaching children to identify and internalise the various plot patterns in stories can help them with their story retells and narrative writing skills.

How can learning about story plots support children's storytelling skills?

During my research on this topic, I came across a quote by Pie Corbett which I thought gave the perfect answer to this question:

When children have internalised the key story plot patterns, it makes it so much easier for them to generate their own stories because they know exactly where the story is going. It helps reduce the cognitive load of the task because they don't need to spend their time and energy on figuring out what is going to happen in the story, but rather focus on things like:

making sure they include all the essential story grammar elements so that their story makes sense to the listener or reader

using new and interesting vocabulary to make their narratives exciting

structuring their sentences appropriately so people can easily understand and follow their stories

I really love how Maria Richards, a Talk for Writing consultant, has broken each of these story plots into the basic narrative structure opening, build up, problem, resolution, ending. See the image below for a preview. This structure forms an easy to follow blueprint from which children can expand to create their own unique stories.

Of course, children don't need to know all the story plots mentioned above off by heart, but having at least some knowledge of the plot patterns can help to improve their storytelling skills. Maria Richards states that many schools choose about plots and teach these every year so children have a bank of plot patterns they can draw on when creating their own stories.

Being familiar with a range of basic story plots can support children in generating narratives as it may help them to focus on improving the quality of their stories, rather than having to worry so much about the content (i.e. what exactly is going to happen in the story).

Teaching children about different story plots can be a great addition to the bank of evidence-based teaching strategies you should be using in your narrative sessions, including the explicit teaching of story grammar, use of graphic organisers, extensive modelling and guided practice.

So next time when you're choosing books for your narrative sessions, take a minute to think about what pIot patterns they follow and make sure you've included books with a couple of different story plots.

What to take away from this post

Consider exposing children to a variety of story plots in your narrative sessions

Teach children about the different plot patterns as part of an evidence-based narrative approach

Check out Book Share Time's story plot filter to find books recommendations for each of story plots mentioned

Resources for you to have a look at

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using Story Plots to Support Children's Storytelling Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This post contains affiliate links Learning about story plots was a bit of a revelation for me. I know that sounds a bit silly. But I had never thought about the fact that there might only be a couple of basic story plots that most stories follow in some way or another; and how teaching children about these plot patterns could make storytelling easier for them.

# data[].attributes.body
Fiction Prompt #1 + Responses

Write for 5 minutes and include the phrase "a galaxy of longing."

Each day he wrote it down. Today was his 433rd day in space. Most days were spent working, although he took an occasional day off to do things few humans would ever have the opportunity to do. Run on a treadmill in zero gravity, for instance, or look at rover footage of Mars with the scientist who built it. He read philosophy books. He peeked in telescopes at galaxies that he would die before ever reaching. As the short days lagged on, he felt the pull of something inexact. A galaxy of longing, too close where others were unreachable, was slowly engulfing him.

# data[].attributes.body
Fiction Prompt #1 + Responses

Write for 5 minutes and include the phrase "a galaxy of longing."

4:13 am. He loved this time of night, sitting on his roof, waiting for shooting stars. He had had a busy few nights saving the city from calamity and was now wired to stay awake. Vigilant. He looked in the few windows that were lit and marked constellations between them. A woman sitting upright in bed. Two teenage boys playing video games. A very young couple embracing. A man about his age, standing in his kitchen, eating cereal, while a German Shepherd looks on.
He could save the city from toxic villains and their increasingly inventive weapons. What he could not do was save these people from a galaxy of longing.

# data[].attributes.body
Fiction Prompt #1 + Responses

Write for 5 minutes and include the phrase "a galaxy of longing.

Hunger. Watching the bounty of Thanksgiving unfurl in the well lit apartment directly across from ours. Hunger. Picking up a pack of sour candies and my mother slapping them out of my hand. "No, piggy!" Hunger. A pile of Hershey's Kisses pours out of Sarah McKinley's locker along with a note written in sloppy script, Will You Go to Prom With Me?
A galaxy of longing. Standing at the prom, waiting silently, hips involuntarily swaying to the low-grade pop.

# data[].attributes.headline
60 Narrative Writing Prompts for Kids | Squarehead Teachers

# data[].attributes.subject
60 Narrative Writing Prompts for Kids | Squarehead Teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Suppose you had invented a time machine. Write a story about what you did with it.

2. Write to tell of a day when you were the teacher. What did you do?

3. Write a story about trading places with your favorite TV, movie, or rock star.

4. One day a spaceship lands on the playground of your school . . .

5. Your shoe must have a story to tell. Tell it.

6. Your class grew plants as a science project. One day you looked at your plant and saw

something really strange had grown there.

7. Write a story about what it would be like if you woke up one morning with wings.

8. On your birthday, a strange-looking lady came to you door and handed you a wrapped present. You rattled it. It made a noise. Write a story about this present.

9. Your teacher one day announced that your class was going on a wonderful field trip. Write a story about this field trip. In your story, you can have your class go anywhere you wish.

10. One day, as you were petting and talking to your friend's dog, it answered back! Write a story about this.

11. Write a story about yourself as a hero. What did you do to become a hero? Tell your story.

12. As you walked down the hallway at school, you heard some strange music coming from the custodian's closet. What was it? Write a story about it.

13. Tell a story about children who live in a world where there is no such thing as television, computers, or electronic games.

14. A distant relative bequeathed you a strange ring. As you put this ring on, you discover that it has strange powers. What does it look like? What does it do? Tell a story about this ring.

15. Tell a story about your ideal place to live. What would it be like to live here?

16. The teacher comes into the room and places a bag on her desk then leaves. The bag moves and wriggles. Write a story about what is in the paper bag.

17. Everyone has a day in his or her life that was extra special or dreams about what he or she would do on a special day. Write a story about a special day you have had or imagine you might have.

18. Every day you pass a door. It's always closed and locked. One day, as you pass, you notice that the door is open. You step inside. Write a story about what was on the other side of that door.

19. Tell a story about what happened when you traveled on a wagon pulled by horses.

20. Tell a story about a day in which everything went wrong.

21. Imagine you could travel to the future and live there. Think of what you think the future would be like. How different would it be from today? Now, write a story about living in the future.

22. Imagine you could go to any place you wanted for as long as you wanted any time you wanted. What place would you visit? Think about what you would do there. Write a story about a visit to a really neat place.

23. Pretend that you lived in colonial times. Think about what your life would be like, how it would be different living more than 200 years ago. Now, write a story about a young person (or yourself) living in George Washington's day.

24. Novels are fun to read because the action keeps you interested, and the characters almost become your friends. Think of a book you really liked. Imagine that you were a new character in this book {choose a book your class has read}. Write a story about what happened.

25. Imagine you woke up one morning and found that you had switched places with a dog or a cat. Think what it would be like. What would you do? Write a story of your day as a dog or a cat.

26. What if you had a personal genie who would grant your every wish? What would your life be like? Think of some of the details. Write a story about having a personal genie.

27. Imagine you had a car that would take you anywhere you wanted to go for one day. Think of where you went in that car and what you did. Write a story about that day.

28. Everyone has a favorite season of the year. What is your favorite season? What do you like to do? Write a story about your favorite season.

29. Imagine one morning there's a knock at your front door. You open the door, and to your great surprise, you find an alien standing there. What do you do? What does it look like? Write

a story about your encounter with this alien.

30. On your way to school one morning you see a huge truck speeding down the road. Suddenly, the back door of the truck opens and a large, mysterious box falls off the back of the truck. It sits there in the road. What is in the box? What do you do? Write a story about this mysterious box.

31. One spring day a skunk wanders into your classroom. What are the results? Write a story about the skunk that visited school.

32. Imagine you had a time machine that you could take only to the past. Where would you choose to go? Think of what you would do there, what it would the like. Write a story of your adventure in the past.

33. One day you are sitting under a large tree. An acorn hits you on the head, and you look up. There, on the branch above you sits a squirrel, laughing at you. The squirrel then looks you square in the eye, begins to talk to you, and asks you to return its acorn. What would you do?

What would happen if you encountered a talking squirrel? Write a story about the experience.

34. Imagine a world where there was no money. What would people do? What would life be like? Write a story about living in a world without any money.

35. There are times when we all wish, even for just a moment, that we could be someone else for a day. Who would you choose to be for that day? What would you do? Think of some details of your day. Now write a story about what your day was like as that person.

36. In a recent disaster, there were some kids who did some heroic things. Think what constitutes (makes) a hero. Imagine yourself as one. Now write a story in which you were a hero/heroine in a tough situation.

37. A little old lady gave you and a friend some magical glitter and told you to sprinkle it on your hair and something special would happen. What happened when you tried it? Write a story about this mysterious magical glitter.

38. One day you and your friends walked up to an old, seemingly abandoned house. You couldn't see inside due to the dust and cobwebs on the windows. You decide to see if the door is locked. You try the knob, and it turns. The door creeks open as if it has not opened in years . . . What happens next? What do you find? What do you and your friend do? Write a story about entering that old, seemingly abandoned house.

39. Love comes in all forms. We can love our parents, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a favorite pet, a brother or sister, a place, even a thing. Thing about someone or something you love. Write a story about that person or thing that involves your feelings.

40. Imagine that your sense of smell was more highly developed than everyone else's. What experiences might you have? How might your life change? What would you be able to smell? Write a story about a person with a very highly developed sense of smell.

41. Imagine yourself temporarily lost in a foreign country where you do not know the language. How do you manage to communicate? What might happen to you? Write a story about a day you might have spent lost in a foreign country without knowing the language.

42. Imagine a city project to have every school student do some hours of community service as a part of the required curriculum. What would you choose to do? What do you think it would be like? What people might you meet? What would you be doing to help? Write a story about your day of community service.

43. Sometimes family members or friends embarrass you when other people are around. Think of some times this has happened to you. Think of what could happen. Write a story about some embarrassing incident you might have had and how you coped with it.

44. Now and then you, without meaning to do so, break something that belongs to someone else. Think about what might be broken. Think about what might happen as a result. Now, write a story about accidentally breaking something that belonged to someone else and the story of what happened as a result.

45. One day your teacher must go home. Your teacher leaves, telling you that someone else will teach the class for the rest of the time. Who do you think will replace the teacher? What happens as a result? Write a story about a time your teacher had to go home, and someone

else took over the class.

46. Imagine you opened your own restaurant. Tell the name of your restaurant. Explain what the restaurant looks like, who works there, and what you serve.

47. Describe your favorite character from a book, a movie, or television.

48. Write a story titled, "My Journey on a Pirate Ship." You and your friends can star in the story.

49. If you could have any animal for a pet, what would it be? Describe the pet and how you would take care of it.

50. Do you have any brothers or sisters? If you do, tell what they're like. If not, tell whether or not you would like to have a brother or sister.

51. If you could have lunch with any famous person who would it be? What would you talk about with this person?

52. How old were you four years ago? Describe some things you can do now that you could not do then.

53. If you could be on any game show, what would it be? Describe what happens when you're on the show.

54. Describe several ways a person your age can earn money.

55. If you could spend an afternoon with one member of your extended family, who would it be? Tell why you chose this person and tell what you do together.

56. Which superpower would you most like to have- invisibility, super strength, or the ability to fly? Describe what kids of things you would do with your powers.

57. Think of a time when you've won something. Tell what you won and how you won it.

58. Invent a new kind of sandwich. Describe what is on it and how you would make it.

59. Describe one thing you're really good at.

60. Imagine you were twenty feet tall. Describe what life would be like. How would it be different from your life now?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1. Suppose you had invented a time machine. Write a story about what you did with it. 2. Write to tell of a day when you were the teacher. What did you do? 3. Write a story about trading places with your favorite TV, movie, or rock star. 4. One day...

# data[].attributes.body
Fiction Prompt #1 + Responses

Write for 5 minutes and include the phrase "a galaxy of longing."

I looked down at my shoes and noticed for the first time their dismal condition. The white was long gone, and the crevices were caked in dirt. The laces frayed and the black Nike swoosh faded. They were the kind of things a student might be proud of on an elementary school playground, but this was the first day of college. Every other girl was wearing outfits plucked out of a magazine, floral skirts paired with satiny blouses and leather sandals that revealed perfectly manicured toes. They carried satchels instead of backpacks. I reached across a galaxy of longing for corn stalks swaying, goats whining, and my mother's voice: "Leave your shoes outside."

# data[].attributes.body
Fiction Prompt #1 + Responses

Write for 5 minutes and include the phrase "a galaxy of longing."

Nina had her family all around her and still felt adrift in a galaxy of longing. How many years it had been since they had gathered like this. She would give up the marble countertops, the orchids, even the cake that the children were devouring, if she could have had this party every year. She hated to be an older woman, discarded, troubled by her regrets. She knew her own need caused the gulf between her and those closest to her. They panicked and retreated into their own lives, which of course made the longing ever more urgent.

# data[].attributes.headline
What *does* improve children’s writing? | David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.subject
What *does* improve children’s writing? | David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In my last post I discussed evidence that suggests grammar teaching does not lead to an improvement in children's writing. Although it seems implausible that grammar teaching would not be positively correlated with writing outcomes, there's a lot of evidence that is strongly suggestive that what I prefer to believe may not in fact actually be true.

I've written enough about cognitive bias to know that I am predisposed to look for evidence that supports my preferences and dismiss evidence that contradicts them. The point of evidence is that it forces us to confront the extent to which our intuitions map against objective reality, and to that extent at least I feel the need to explore the idea that I might be wrong.

So, although I struggle with the thought that grammatical knowledge would not lead to greater proficiency in writing, I'm willing to accept that grammar teaching may be counter productive for all sorts of reasons. The grammatical concepts may not be carefully sequenced, the teaching itself might be focussed simply on learning meta-linguistic terminology, the teaching could be focussed on performance rather than learning, and so on. Another issue could be opportunity cost. It might be that time spent teaching grammar is time that could be more profitably spent on some other activity more likely to improve children's writing.

Students tend to get a lot of writing practice in school and so, for the opportunity cost argument to work, it would have to be the case that what children spend their time doing in English lessons and elsewhere is more likely to lead to improvement. If, for the moment, we accept that grammar teaching doesn't improve children's writing, there are at least three questions we should consider:
1. Is children's writing as good as we would want it to be?
Broadly, no. Every teacher will know that although some children write wonderfully well, in many cases written responses are wooden, technically inaccurate and do a poor job of expressing complex thoughts. My suspicion is that there is probably be a Matthew Effect in operation; those children who we might describe as 'word-rich' start their school career with a linguistic advantage - they have heard more words, reach more and thus have greater vocabularies and more experience of the written word than their 'word poor' peers. A 1988 study suggests that 9 year olds at the 90th percentile read almost 2.5 million words a year outside of school, whereas a child at the 10th percentile will have been exposed to around 50,000 words. It takes the bottom 10% a whole year what the top 10% read in two days! Those who begin school with this sort of advantage require little in the way of teaching - their ability to write (at least to some extent) is imbibed osmotically from the sheer quantity of written material they encounter. But what of everyone else?

I've suggested before that our ability to write is linked to our ability to speak. We can only write down that which we are able to say. Some children are very good at making connections and explaining their thoughts but struggle to write them down. They are limited to only being able to express their thoughts in spoken language - they're unable to mentally translate into written language because they do not possess the vocabulary and structures of written language. They know that if they wrote down what they have said aloud it would no longer make sense.

Another problem is the embedding of bad habits through poorly constructed writing practice. I call this the capital letter problem. Children often know that their writing is inaccurate or clunky. They know they should use capital letters, spell correctly and avoid punctuation errors but they don't know these things well enough. Anything that occupies out attention reduces our capacity to think. This capacity is strictly limited and if we're juggling complex ideas we wont have much attention left to think about accuracy. Skilled writers will have automatised these basics so that they quite literally don't have to think about them.

I think we can agree that, on average, children's writing is not as good as we would want it to be.
2. What sorts of things do English teachers do to improve children's writing?
English - and by extension writing - tends to get a pretty generous allocation of curriculum time in both primary and secondary schools, and children also practice writing in many other curriculum areas. All this represents a huge opportunity for improving children's writing. So, what do teachers - especially English teachers - spend their time doing?

Greg Ashman has recently written that the teaching of writing is backwards. Typically, students are asked to write something and then, when they make mistakes, teachers spend their time producing a written commentary on how to correct these errors. He suggests that it would be more sensible to give children precise instruction on how to write before asking them to do the writing. This may seem obvious - and many teachers will of course be working hard to model and scaffold writing tasks effectively - but in my experience of working with teachers in a great many different settings, this is all too familiar. We do this because although we recognise good writing when we see it, too few teachers understand how the 'skill' of writing is actually composed of many thousands of items of propositional knowledge. These items become invisible as they're automatised and so it can be almost impossible for a skilled writer to recognise the components of good writing.

All too often, English teachers expect students to get better at writing by practising writing extended pieces. Obviously this has a place, but it will disproportionately advantage word rich students who already know how to write well. This is bit like expecting people to get better at tennis just by playing tennis or to get better at the piano just by bashing the keys. In many areas of complex skill we know that we have drill the basics. Athletic prowess results from acquiring often minute technical skills; fluent musicianship stems from repeating scales and arpeggios over and over. It makes sense to think that fluent writing is most likely to arise from a similar process, but exactly what this process might look like is something that has not been codified and shared amongst English teachers.
3. What are the most effective methods for improving children's writing?
I'm happy to accept that being able to parse or diagram a sentence bears very little resemblance to the skill of writing. Although it feels intuitively true that mastering the basics of English grammar could only be useful, let's assume I'm wrong. What else then does the research advocate?

The picture is a little bleak. The paper by Wyse and Torgerson which concluded that grammar teaching is ineffective says that, "Although the numbers of robust experimental trials relevant to effective teaching in schools have increased, our analysis of trials in relation to the teaching of writing suggests that there are still too many studies that are not of sufficient methodological quality. In particular, too many studies are weak in relation to allocation of pupils to groups, and the measures for writing remain a challenge."

With this caveat they make the following recommendations:

The most recent meta-analyses of high-quality research studies on writing suggest that, rather than emphasise grammar, the following practices could be selected as a priority for teaching writing in primary/elementary education: (a) an increase in the amount of time that pupils have for writing; (b) adoption of a process approach to writing; (c) creation of a classroom environment that is appropriately supportive of pupils' attempts at learning to write better; (d) development of pupils' writing skills, strategies and knowledge, including ways of planning writing; (e) a use of assessment for learning techniques; (f) a use of computers as part of the process of writing; (g) a use of writing meaningfully across different subject areas (Graham et al., 2016; Wyse, 2017). The robustness of the evidence underpinning these practices is built not on single studies but on multiple RCTs and experimental trials.

Let's briefly consider each suggestion in turn.
(a) an increase in the amount of time that pupils have for writing
As noted, children already spend an awful lot of time writing. If current practices are ineffective, simply doing more of the same is unlikely to result in an improvement. My advice to teachers is to ask students to write less. Specifically, if teachers don't explicitly value the process of writing, then students are likely to learn that how they write is relatively unimportant. I'd rather see children doing shorter more focussed writing exercises such as those advocated in my Slow Writing posts.
(b) adoption of a process approach to writing
The idea here is to focus on the process rather than the product of writing in order to encourage a more metacognitive approach to the act of writing. This is essentially the idea behind Slow Writing and one I'm happy to endorse. However, what children write is as important as how they write and if we entirely neglect the product, that is also likely to have negative consequences. I see the 'process approach' as a form of scaffolding and, like all scaffolding, teachers need to have a plan for removing it to prevent children becoming dependent on it.
(c) creation of a classroom environment that is appropriately supportive of pupils' attempts at learning to write better
I'm not really sure what this means. If it means decorating the physical environment with helpful reminders and motivational quotes, then - as I explain here - it's probably not a good idea. If it means creating an environment where children are encouraged to behave well, work hard and value effort, then it's almost certainly a good idea.
(d) development of pupils' writing skills, strategies and knowledge, including ways of planning writing
It's somewhat tautological to suggest that the best way to improve children's writing is by developing their writing skills. It's obviously right that children need to develop the knowledge to write well, the question is, how? I'd agree that it makes sense to devote some time to effective planning but again, do we know what effective planning actually is? Does it look the same for all types of writing? Should students to taught to use different kinds of graphic organisers? Committing curriculum to planning may be useful, but will also be limiting. Eventually children need to develop effective mental representations of what good writing looks and feels like so this approach must address how students will internalise the idea of planning.
(e) a use of assessment for learning techniques
Again, it depends on what you mean by assessment for learning. I've written extensively on how we get AfL wrong and so it should go without saying that we would need to avoid these pitfalls. In the worst case, teachers can end up justifying the kind of backwards teaching Ashman has written about as an AfL technique. Let's not do that.
(f) a use of computers as part of the process of writing
As a professional writer, I always use a computer to write. As a classroom teacher, I rarely did. If the aim of English teaching is - in part - to support children's performance in national exams, then they won't be helped by spending too much time using computers. Unless they learn to hand write fluently, they will be at an enormous disadvantage. I suspect that underlying this recommendation is the notion that using computers is inherently motivating. This is a mistake. Computers are a useful tool, just as a pencil is. It may be true that some children - especially those with terrible hand writing - will prefer to use a computer, nobody gets better at something by avoiding doing it. Also, there's the additional problem that computers can be an absorbing distraction. If my experience is anything to go by, I spend more time stopping children using Word Art than on improving their writing.
(g) a use of writing meaningfully across different subject areas
This is something that happens as a matter of course in most primary settings and is definitely something that secondary schools ought to be better at. Non-English teachers sometimes feel resentful of the idea that they ought to be developing their students' writing skills, but this is terribly misguided. Writing is different in different curriculum areas. It would be foolish indeed for geography teachers to rely on their English teacher colleagues to teach the kind of writing that works best in geography. It's also worth considering that time spent thinking how best to express ideas about content will not only improve students' ability to write, it could also improve their ability to think about the content they're learning. Who wouldn't want that?

In conclusion, if teachers are doing all of the above exceptionally well then maybe they have a solid argument for not teaching grammar at any point. I'm not and never have argued that grammar teaching should replace any other part of the writing process. My position is a backlash against the fact that for decades, schools in England have systematically avoided teaching grammar and as a result are now ill-equipped to do it well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What *does* improve children's writing? - David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In my last post I discussed evidence that suggests grammar teaching does not lead to an improvement in children's writing.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Inference Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.subject
The Inference Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Inference is a tricky area of reading. Children don't always understand what it means to infer, and stumble on test questions demanding this of them. I've found that teaching the skill explicitly using a non-threatening stimulus has worked brilliantly. First, you develop the understanding of the skill, what is involved and what is required to answer questions. Then this is practised, and practised some more (justifying inferences, anyone?), before being applied to text. The joy lies in the depth of responses offered by all children taking part.

Here are some of my favourites for developing inference in the primary classroom. Let me know if you try any!

Click on the image to see the original post.
You can read more about the approach here, and ask me on Facebook or Twitter.

Note: Some of the questions below will include other skills, including prediction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Inference Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Inference is a tricky area of reading. Children don't always understand what it means to infer, and stumble on test questions demanding this of them. I've found that teaching the skill explicitly using a non-threatening stimulus has worked brilliantly. First, you develop the understanding of the skill, what is involved and what is required to answer questions.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Character Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.subject
The Character Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Character Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.headline
The Fiction Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.subject
The Fiction Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This collection doesn't need much of an introduction from me... These are brilliant images to inspire brilliantly creative writing.

The questions are included because 'reading and writing float on a sea of talk' (Britton, 1983) - the quality ideas, language and structures come from a rich discussion of the picture and the possibilities for writing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Fiction Collection - Once Upon a Picture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This collection doesn't need much of an introduction from me... These are brilliant images to inspire brilliantly creative writing. The questions are included because 'reading and writing float on a sea of talk' (Britton, 1983) - the quality ideas, language and structures come from a rich discussion of the picture and the possibilities for writing.

# data[].attributes.headline
Once Upon A Picture - Image prompts to inspire reading and writing

# data[].attributes.subject
Once Upon A Picture - Image prompts to inspire reading and writing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

# data[].attributes.headline
Writing the Ending for a Short Story « Find Your Creative Muse

# data[].attributes.subject
Writing the Ending for a Short Story « Find Your Creative Muse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Dave Hood

How do you write an ending for your short story? There is no single method of ending a story. Many writers don't know how their story will end as they write the story. And so the ending emerges as the story is revealed on the page. Other writers know how the story will end before they begin, and so they can focus on the resolution as they write. There is no right or wrong approach.

In this article, I briefly explain the meaning of an ending, how to end your short story, and explain what the ending must do for the reader. I also provide some tips on how to write an ending for a short story or novel.

The Meaning of an Ending

All stories must end with resolution. There must be some answer to the central conflict. When you write the ending, your story must be complete. All unanswered questions posed in the story must be answered. All loose ends must be tied up.

Writer Flannery O'Connor the end is when the story is complete, "when nothing more than relating to the mystery of that character's personality can be show through that particular dramatization." (On Writing Short Stories, edited by Tom Bailey)

An ending can be framed in terms of denouncement, realization, or epiphany. Each has a different shade of meaning.
Denouncement.
The story can end with a closed ending or open ending. In an closed ending, nothing more can happen. For instance, the villain might be killed. In an open ending, the writer leaves questions about what will happen next. For instance, the gunslinger who has just killed the bad guy, rides off into the sunset. The reader is left to imagine what the central character will do next with his life.
Realization
It is less powerful than an epiphany. The central character gains some insight or is enlightened, and then makes some change in his/her life. For instance, the short story Lust by writer Susan Minot ends with a realization: Their blank look tells you the girl their fucking is not there anymore. You seemed to have disappeared. (On Writing Short Stories, edited by Tom Bailey)
Epiphany
James Joyce introduced the technique of epiphany. It is not simply a realization, but a "magical moment, "felt moment", that results in permanent change by the character. James Joyce writes includes an epiphany in the short story Eveline. The threat of repeating her mother's life spurs Eveline's epiphany that she must leave with Frank and embark on a new phase in her life, but this realization is short-lived. As the story ends, she has a second epiphany, which concludes the story.

Ways to End a Short Story

Short stories or novels can end in many ways. Here are a few common ways in which writers conclude their fictional stories:
Twist Ending
Sometimes the writer concludes the story with a twist ending. Readers are lead to believe that a story will end in a particular way, and then it ends in a different way. So the ending is unexpected. For instance, the story can end with a tragic ending, one in which the protagonist dies. The story might end with an ironic ending, which reveals the darker side of human nature, the shadow of man. Kate Chopin's "A Story of an Hour" is concluded with a twist ending.
Resolving Action
Sometimes the story ends with some final action that brings an end to the conflict, complete finality. In Jack London's To Build a Fire", the story ends with the central character freezes to death while on journey to the work camp.
End of the story ending
Sometimes a story ends after it has been told. This is how Tom Franklin's short story "Alaska" ends. The narrator tells the fantastical story, the dream trip, and then ends with..."we would stop playing as if on cue and look at each other, suddenly happy, remembering Alaska, waiting for us."So does William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."
Ambiguous ending
Essentially, the writer crafts an ending in which the story ends, but the reader is left wondering what will happen next. So, there is no permanent resolution to the ending. Another story can be written, which brings total closure to the story. You see this sort of ending in sequels.

What the Ending Must Do

Your ending must tie up loose ends and answer any unanswered questions in the story.

Writing the ending is also as important as your opening. So, you need to write an ending that resonates in the mind of the reader.

The ending must also be a logical outcome of the story. In other words, it must be based on cause and effect.

The ending should also answer the central conflict of the story.

Sometimes the ending ends the story but doesn't mean the end. The reader is left to answer the questions implied by the ending of the story.

If the ending is disappointing, many writers won't recommend that other's read your short story or novel. And it probably won't get published.

Only through finding a meaning to your story will the best ending become possible. That is why theme is so important.

Tips for Writing an Ending

Your ending should provide closure to the story. In the issue of A Writer's Guide to Fiction (Published by Writer Mag), writer Sharon Warner provides five tips for ending a story, which you can use to help create a story with closure. These include:

1. Avoid the to-neat ending. In other words, don't wrap it up and seal it up tight. This approach trivializes your story. Instead, the write the ending until there is almost a new story that will unfold at the end.

2. Look to your beginning to find your ending. In other words, your opening will often suggest how the story should end.

3. Write provisional endings as your story progresses. As you write the draft, think about how it might end. Then write a provisional ending. A short story has a beginning, middle, and end. So, if you are going to write a story, you should be prepared to write a complete story, a story that has an ending. Once the story is written, you can revise the content, including the ending.Let the story speak for itself. Sometimes the best endings focus a step or two away from the central

4. A good story ends loosely. It doesn't tie up all the possibilities that the story presents.

5. Avoid the tendency to summarize. Don't be preachy or didactic. In other words, don't tell the reader what to think about the story. Let the reader discover it through subtext it, make his/her own decisions.

Final Thoughts

Many short stories end with an epiphany. The character experiences a significant revelation or realization. This was a technique introduced by writer James Joyce.

Your ending must resolve the story. That is why we refer to the ending as a resolution. There must be some answer to the conflict-but not necessarily the right answer.

The ending should also lead to some meaning of the story. What does the story, especially the ending, have to say about human nature or the human condition.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Dave Hood How do you write an ending for your short story? There is no single method of ending a story. Many writers don't know how their story will end as they write the story. And so the endin...

# data[].attributes.headline
My January Top Ten List: Writing Lessons and Resources | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.subject
My January Top Ten List: Writing Lessons and Resources | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
My January Top Ten List: Writing Lessons and Resources | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beth Newingham shares her favorite mini-lessons, reproducibles, and interactive online resources that will both challenge enthusiastic writers and motivate reluctant ones

# data[].attributes.headline
6 Clever Ways To Achieve The Perfect Ending To Your Story - Writer's Edit

# data[].attributes.subject
6 Clever Ways To Achieve The Perfect Ending To Your Story - Writer's Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You've done all the hard work. The amazing story you've been writing is 99% finished; now you just have to end it. Cue aimless staring at the computer screen, right?

There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart" - Alex de Campi

Ending a story can be an excruciating and frustrating experience. We all want that perfect conclusion, one that complements and fulfils the purpose of the story.

We especially want an ending that leaves ourselves and our audience satisfied. Achieving this is not as easy as it sounds; an ending takes on a lot of gravity when you realise there's no coming back once it's done.

Often, a reader's most long-lasting memory of your story will be its ending, so it's important to agonise over it just as much as you did your faultless first paragraph.

Thankfully, there's a limit to the numbers of ways you can tie up your tale. The way your piece ends should largely be connected to how you've written the rest of the story. You should know what you were trying to say when you set out to write, and thus have an idea of the impression you want to leave when the story is over. There is a theory that stories can only have five possible outcomes, but to make things even easier, here are six specific types of endings you can consider to help you finish your masterpiece.

1. Resolved ending

A resolved ending is great if you want everything neatly packaged and put away. All the plotlines and character threads are concluded. There's no conjecture and no questions to be asked. The fate of everyone in the story is known and it is clear how the characters might live on into the future. This is good if you are writing a singular novel or concluding a series.

Examples that immediately come to mind are mysteries. Despite the bulk of a mystery novel being clouded in suspense and confusion, everything is illuminated for the reader at the climactic end of the story. Usually, one or more people unravel the mystery and expose the culprit or cause of distress. A style that commonly employs this ending is the 'whodunnit' story; an awesome example to check out is Stephen Donaldson's The Man Who Tried To Get Away.

Fairy-tales also use resolved endings, almost every time. Don't be tricked into thinking this type of ending has to be all roses, though. A story can be resolved without being happily resolved. Take a look at these original fairy-tales that aren't so Hollywood-perfect.

This is basically the opposite to a resolved ending. The overarching plot is left unfinished and the ultimate outcome of the characters' story arcs is unknown based on the textual information. This might be used to entice readers to use their imagination and create their own ending, satisfying themselves. More commonly, it's used to set up for a sequel. References are usually made to tasks still to be done or conflicts still to be determined, essentially making the book one big chapter of a larger story.

Obviously, this is one of the easiest endings to write. Readers understand nothing has to be wrapped up here, but it's still vital to create a sense of excitement and anticipation using an unresolved ending, otherwise people may not be interested in coming back for the second instalment.

There are plenty of famous examples to pay heed to, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Rowling's Harry Potter series, or The Chronicles of Narnia books written by C. S. Lewis.

3. Implied ending

This is often the most tempting ending for an author and the most frustrating for a reader. The conclusion, or 'what happens in the end', isn't explicitly stated or displayed. This is achieved by holding back information or leaving multiple logical explanations up in the air, allowing the reader to make up their own mind. The audience is refused a fully informed outcome. They may be left thinking a range of questions:

'Did he or didn't he?'

'Is she alive or dead?'

'Is it that or is it this?'

'Is the narrator lying or telling the truth?'

This ending is very effective because it creates a talking point and keeps the reader pondering long after they've put down the book. For an author, this is ideal; if readers are thinking about you, they'll likely go looking for more of your work.

A terrific example of this type of ending is Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (also made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio). In this story, there are two explanations for the reader to consider at the end. One is more implied than the other, but both are feasible. Lehane has written so masterfully that he effectively teases the reader, leaving them uncomfortably torn between the two. Personally, it took me a couple of months and a conversation with my mother, who had also read the book, to settle on one ending over the other. See some more examples of ambiguous endings in multiple genres here.

4. Twist in the tail

In theory, a story that ends in this way catches the audience by surprise with a completely unexpected turn of events. As a result, the whole story is usually turned upside down, with a previously believed fact turning out to be false. This may involve a character 'coming back' from the dead, a hero revealing themselves as a villain (or vice versa), or a new and vital piece of information coming to light at the last minute.

A 'twist' ending is good for playing with readers' emotions. You can bring them up quickly or send them crashing down, depending on what route you decide to take with your story. Either way, you can cause a dramatic shift in a reader's attitude.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel (and film) that quickly comes to mind here. The revelation towards the end of the story will have you replaying every previous event in your mind and will completely change your understanding of the novel. Here's a list, topped by Fight Club, which includes six more of the best plot twists seen in literature.

5. Tie-back

To put it simply, a story written in this fashion will begin and end in the same way. The ending is revealed first before the author fills in the details of how that ending came to be. While this may take away some of the suspense for a reader, a clever author is still able to introduce twists and surprises.

A tie-back ending also allows for a very focused method of writing - it's always easier to navigate if you know where you're going, right? It also creates a feeling of balance and equilibrium for the story. American author Kurt Vonnegut had many tips for writers, including that they should 'start as close to the end as possible'.

The Star by Arthur C. Clarke is a nice short example of a tie-back ending; the beginning shows a main character in pain, and the ending ties back to the cause of his pain. Read it online here.

6. Crystal ball

This conclusion goes 'beyond the ending' in a way, looking into the future. It explains what happens to the characters years after the main events of the story. Authors and readers alike may think they want this ending - understandably, they want to see more of their favourite characters - but most of the time, it may not really be necessary.

A common way of writing a 'crystal ball' ending is with an epilogue. An example might be a section in which the perspective is from the main character's child, who was absent from the main story. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows fits nicely into this category, rounding off the series with an epilogue set 19 years after the main story.

* * *

So there you have it! Six endings to consider when finishing your story, novel, or script. Always remember what you set out to achieve and consider the feelings you want to leave with your audience. Last impressions are just as important as first impressions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Clever Ways To Achieve The Perfect Ending To Your Story - Writer's Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You've done all the hard work. The amazing story you've been writing is 99% finished; now you just have to end it. Cue aimless staring at the computer screen, right? There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book.

# data[].attributes.headline
Improving writing, with a particular focus on supporting boys' writing development

# data[].attributes.subject
Improving writing, with a particular focus on supporting boys' writing development

# data[].attributes.headline
Motivating Boys to Write: Extreme Writing & Other Tips

# data[].attributes.subject
Motivating Boys to Write: Extreme Writing & Other Tips

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Think about the boys in your class. How many of them would you describe as good writers? Now think about the girls. How many of them are good writers?

If yours is a typical classroom, the "good writers" in your class are predominantly girls. The boys? Most of them probably write just enough to get by - and probably hate writing. Over half of surveyed American girls (53 percent) say they "love to write;" just 35 percent of the boys say the same.

Boys' distaste for writing may partially explain why boys consistently lag behind girls on tests of writing proficiency. According to the National Survey of Educational Progress, eighth-grade boys are more than twice as likely as girls (27 percent to 12 percent) to earn "below basic" writing scores. The same holds true at the 12th-grade level: 28 percent of 12th-grade boys are "below basic" in writing, compared to 14 percent of girls. Just 19 percent of 12th-grade boys earn "proficient" scores; 29 percent of the girls do. And half as many boys as girls (2 percent vs. 4 percent) are considered "advanced."

Diana Cruchley, a former classroom teacher and author of "The Power of Extreme Writing," developed her popular workshop, "Guys Write!: 9 Sure-Fire Ways to Excite Your Boys About Writing (and your girls too)," after hearing teacher after teacher complain about boys who write just enough and lack any passion or desire to write. We recently asked her why boys struggle with writing - and what teachers can do to motivate them.

The fact that more boys struggle with writing than girls - is that a socially constructed problem, a biologically based problem, or some of each?

Boys have more testosterone than girls. One the things testosterone does is it makes you more competitive/aggressive.

The second thing testosterone does is it makes you very conscious of things in motion. It helps your ability to intercept things in motion, too. Think about hitting a baseball. You have to know when the pitcher is going to release the ball, judge the speed and trajectory, figure out if it will cross between your shoulders and knees over the plate, and then decide when to release the bat in order to intercept it. Little girls can do this, too, of course; the continuum of human behavior is very overlapping. But because boys, generally speaking, have more testosterone, they have a biologic advantage. And little boys really quickly learn that they're good at these activities.

In all cultures, both sexes suppress in themselves those qualities they believe have been assigned to the other sex. So if a girl walks into physics class in grade 12, and sees 28 boys and only one other girl, she may subconsciously think, I didn't realize this has been assigned to the other sex. I guess I shouldn't be doing this.

"Our entire society is conspiring against our boys doing well at reading and writing."

Our entire society is conspiring against our boys doing well at reading and writing.

Let's consider just one example: Harry Potter. Which of those children had their hand up in class? Hermione. Who has pre-practiced the spells so she's good at them? Hermione. What is the job of the boys? To save the world and play Quidditch. Now, the good news for girls is that Hermione's job also includes saving the world, but the model for boys is girls are the ones who should work hard at school.

What do teachers need to understand about boys?

Boys are product oriented; they prefer to make and do stuff. Girls are process oriented; they tend to play highly cooperative games without winners and losers. Boys play very competitive games, with winners and losers.

When kids arrive at school for the first time, there's almost no product. It is 100 percent process. It is the reading process, the writing process, the processes of mathematics. The first two years of school are process, process, process. That's very good for most girls; not good for most boys.

Around grade four, boys start to look around and think, there's a game going on here, and I'm a loser at this game. They don't want to play a game they can't win, so they starting doing skimpy drafts, for instance, because they think they're not going to succeed anyway.

What mistakes do teachers make when teaching boys writing?

Make it boring. We are now going to write, and take out your journals causes your boys' eyes to roll. Why? Because society still gives signals that diary writing and expressing your emotions is a girl thing - so the boys don't want to do that - and it doesn't sound like I'm going to have any fun doing it. That's why I give writing activities fun names, like Extreme Writing.

How can educators effectively engage boys in writing instruction?

Let me give you an example: Let's say we're finishing the Egypt unit, and I want the kids to write something using vocabulary from that unit. Pick the 30 or so words you think they need to know and tell your students, "Tomorrow, we're going to play a game involving these words." Then practice with the students, maybe 10 minutes, so they're ready for the game tomorrow. The next day, practice again before they play.

When they come in, tell them you're going to play the Overhead Dash. Pair up the kids so one can see the projection screen and one can't. You project vocabulary words, and the child who can see the words has about a minute to give clues to help the other one guess as many words as possible. (For "pyramid," the describing student might say, "It's the thing shaped like a triangle. It sits on the sand. And you bury people in it.") Then the students switch roles.

Then say, "Now I want you to use those words to write a story set in ancient Egypt. Think Indiana Jones, treasure. I want you to use as many of these words as you can, so let's give you a goal - at least 14. Ready, set, write!" This works because the vocabulary is really fresh in their mind. They've had fun playing the game, and it's a competitive activity.

Boys are also very visual people, so if you give them visuals to write to that are amusing or dangerous-looking, they'll respond. Humor matters, too. Try funny writing prompts. I highly recommend the book "The Secret Life of Grown-Ups."

What about boys who want to write battle stories?

Everyone can make their own decisions, but I tell my students, "I don't want any blood or guns." Part of that is because I don't want to read long, graphic descriptions of somebody dying with their guts falling out. The other part is that, if I let them write shooting and battle stories, the temptation for many of them is to use stuff off of the screen that somebody else has already written. I want inventive stories.

Jennifer L.W. Fink is a freelance writer who frequently writes about education, health and parenting. See her work at www.jenniferlwfink.com and www.buildingboys.net.

Learn More: Click to view related resources.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Motivating Boys to Write: Extreme Writing & Other Tips

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Think about the boys in your class. How many of them would you describe as good writers? Now think about the girls. How many of them are good writers? If yours is a typical classroom, the "good writers" in your class are predominantly girls. The boys?

# data[].attributes.headline
Motivating Boy Writers: 23 Top Tips for Boys Writing - Research

# data[].attributes.subject
Motivating Boy Writers: 23 Top Tips for Boys Writing - Research

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Building on the very successful " Me Read, No Way" document, the Province of Ontario released, " Me Read? And How!"

Provided for you below are 23 strategies and ideas to assist our boy writers.

I've included page references for each strategy so you can read more about them in the full document.

1. Boys who were allowed to choose writing topics showed increased motivation and engagement. Page 10

2. Boys are helped by experiencing examples of different text forms. This helped boys in non-fiction writing. Page 15

3. A "guys-only" writing workshop was initiated for a small number of boys. They came away very motivated to write as a result. Page 16

4. Boys planned their writing using graphic organizers both individually and in pairs. Page 17

5. When boys were given assignments with step-by-step instructions, clear expectations and a formula to follow, assignments were completed. Page 23

6. Boys were introduced to the "APE" (answer, prove, extend) strategy to help them to write at a higher level. Page 23

7. Boys saw the importance of an authentic audience and a real purpose when they produced a "Boys Writing for Boys!" newsletter. Page 23

8. Talk is an important scaffold for boys writing activities. Talk builds social interaction, and deepens understanding and is a precursor to writing. Pages 32 and 33.

9. Allow boys to share their thinking through talk prior to a written assignment. It will improve their ability to communicate. Page 34

10. Boys use of the debate to discuss authentic and relevant issues transferred into their non-fiction persuasive writing. Page 35

11. Boys welcome having male role models as writers. Page 39

12. Boys choice of topics for writing allows for ownership. Page 47

13. Schools can tap into the real-life connection by creating blogs for the students to use for class writing. Page 48.

14. Boys prefer to write about real-life and hands-on experiences. Page 49.

15. Boys' writing improved during activities that were highly motivating and grounded in the real world, coupled with direct instruction about the writing form and supported with the use of visuals such as anchor charts, word walls, and graphic organizers. Page 49.

16. Boys like to write about exaggerations, humour, silly writing, rap songs, procedural writing, short scenes. Page 51.

17. ICT in the form of computers, blogs, wikis and digital voice recorders have been used with boys to reinforce writing skills. Page 53.

18. Boys with special needs thrive when given the opportunity to work with assistive technologies: graphic organizers, dictation software. Write and edit in-class compositions electronically allowed them to receive immediate feedback. Page 53.

19. Teachers observed that when the number of paper and pencil tasks was decreased, students were more engaged during the writing activities. Page 55.

20. Boys who design and play video games develop sophisticated operational, cultural and critical literacy skills. Page 57.

21. Boys requested boy friendly topics, a clear outline of what is expected, a shorter writing process and fewer things to fix when they are finished. Page 66.

22. An emphasis on non-fiction writing (Reeves, 2000) Page 79.

23. Boys' teachers placed a heavier emphasis on oral assessment and performance-based assessment, such as drama activities rather than traditional assessments based on writing. Page 82.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Building on the very successful " Me Read, No Way" document, the Province of Ontario released, " Me Read? And How!" Provided for you below are 23 strategies and ideas to assist our boy writers. I've included page references for each strategy so you can read more about them in the full document.

# data[].attributes.headline
Resources – The Writing Book – Teaching Writing just got Easier.

# data[].attributes.subject
Resources – The Writing Book – Teaching Writing just got Easier.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On this page you will find additional resources and sample downloads from the book to complement The Writing Book and The Oral Language Book.
Please contact us if you would like to share writing and oral language ideas from your classroom or school.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On this page you will find additional resources and sample downloads from the book to complement The Writing Book and The Oral Language Book. Please contact us if you would like to share writing and oral language ideas from your classroom or school.

# data[].attributes.headline
Random Sentence Starters – Teach Starter

# data[].attributes.subject
Random Sentence Starters – Teach Starter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Random Sentence Starters - Teach Starter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A fun way to spin up random sentence starters to inspire your students to start writing!

# data[].attributes.headline
Story Starters / Teaching & learning resources / Success for Boys - Success for Boys

# data[].attributes.subject
Story Starters / Teaching & learning resources / Success for Boys - Success for Boys

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Story Starters / Teaching & learning resources / Success for Boys - Success for Boys

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Story Starters is a video resource aimed at engaging boys and inspiring them to write. It has been developed for boys in years 5 to 8, using boys of that age to help create the material.

# data[].attributes.headline
BBC Bitesize - KS3 English - Creative and narrative writing - Revision 2

# data[].attributes.subject
BBC Bitesize - KS3 English - Creative and narrative writing - Revision 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
BBC Bitesize - KS3 English - Creative and narrative writing - Revision 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Imaginative or creative writing absorbs readers in an entertaining way.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ending With Impact – Three Top Techniques

# data[].attributes.subject
Ending With Impact – Three Top Techniques

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Posted on by Jen McVeity

An ending that has impact leaves that final convincing impression on the reader! Here are three different techniques you can use to achieve this:

Technique 1: Link to opening/circular ending

The ending links back to the opening paragraph (Sizzling Start) tying the whole text together.
It's the year 2050, at 9 am every morning I switch on my computer and sign in to my classes. When my mum talks about school, she tells me about her teachers. Nowadays things are a bit different, computers do all the teaching!
Sizzling Start
You might feel like it is a good idea to get rid of your teacher sometimes, but can you imagine logging on to a computer every day rather than being taught by a real person? Think how much you would miss out on - the laughter, the ability to ask questions, the support. You'd never get that from a computer!
Ending with Impact

Technique 2: Paint a word picture (Show, Don't Tell)

The ending paints a picture in the reader's mind that supports the points made in the text.
Therefore, I think downloading music without permission is the same as stealing.
Before
I browse through the CDs searching for Justin Bieber's new album. I hope they haven't sold out. Finally, I find it, casually slip it into my pocket and walk out of the shop. Most people would call this stealing and yet lots of people do exactly the same thing when they download music online without paying.
After

[Related Article] - Harness the Power of Show, Don't Tell

Technique 3: Call to action

The ending tells the reader exactly how they can make a difference.
In conclusion, everyone should donate blood.
Before
What does every human have in common? We all have blood running through our veins, about five litres of blood to be exact. That means everyone has the ability to donate blood and help save a life.
After

Mastering these ending techniques will enable students to create truly spectacular and persuasive endings.

To learn more about how to create Endings with Impact sign up for a One-Day Workshop.

Ending with Impact Action Activity

Practise writing three endings that pack a punch, one for each technique:

1. Link to opening/circular ending

Challenge students to write a Sizzling Start and an Ending with Impact for the following topics:

Dangerous dogs should be put down.

Boys and girls should be taught separately.

2. Paint a word picture (Show, Don't Tell)

Write a Conclusion/Ending for these topics that convinces the reader by SHOWING rather than TELLING:

Television is harmful for children.

Good weather makes people happier.

3. Call to action

Write an ending for these campaigns that encourages the reader to 'do something better':

Everyone should shop at local stores.

Recycling should be mandatory.

For more Step 7 Action Activities become a Seven Steps Online member.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ending With Impact - Three Top Techniques

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Posted on by Jen McVeity An ending that has impact leaves that final convincing impression on the reader! Here are three different techniques you can use to achieve this: The ending links back to the opening paragraph (Sizzling Start) tying the whole text together.

# data[].attributes.headline
Narrative Writing Samples ... learm how to teach it!

# data[].attributes.subject
Narrative Writing Samples ... learm how to teach it!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Narrative Writing Samples

Writing is all about connecting with others.
When a reader finishes a story, you want them to laugh or cry...or even sigh in wonder or despair!

But how do you teach the skill of writing a great narrative? The Seven Steps to Writing Success breaks down writing into explicit, practical steps that make it easy to teach students how to create an engaging narrative.
See the difference the Seven Steps can make in the writing samples below...

Before & After
Samples

Before & Afters are a great way to see the difference the Seven Steps can make. Share these with your students!

NAPLAN Exemplar −
Years 3/5

How does an author tackle NAPLAN? See Jen McVeity's (author & Seven Steps creator) Narrative writing response to the 2016 prompt.

NAPLAN Exemplar −
Years 7/9

Every year Jen sits the NAP writing task to see how she goes as an author - and to put the Seven Steps techniques to the test.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Writing is all about connecting with others. When a reader finishes a story, you want them to laugh or cry...or even sigh in wonder or despair! But how do you teach the skill of writing a great narrative?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Education resources for schools teachers and students - ABC Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ABC Education has 4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

# data[].attributes.headline
Scary nouns and adjectives in Super Stories: The Abandoned House - English (3,4,5,6)

# data[].attributes.subject
Scary nouns and adjectives in Super Stories: The Abandoned House - English (3,4,5,6)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Education resources for schools teachers and students - ABC Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ABC Education has 4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

# data[].attributes.headline
Primary curriculum content « English for the Australian Curriculum

# data[].attributes.subject
Primary curriculum content « English for the Australian Curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Primary curriculum content " English for the Australian Curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This resource provides new elaborations of curriculum content for the Australian Curriculum (Version 4.1), to support your use of the curriculum in teaching. In the units of work, the sequences and activities have links via codes to Australian Curriculum content descriptions, and each unit has a summary table that maps those links, and takes you directly to individual sequences in the unit where the elaborations are made.

# data[].attributes.headline
Writing an adventure by Amanda Wong, Spring Parks Primary School, Vic © Education Services Australia Ltd, 2010, except where indicated otherwise Tips for. - ppt download

# data[].attributes.subject
Writing an adventure by Amanda Wong, Spring Parks Primary School, Vic © Education Services Australia Ltd, 2010, except where indicated otherwise Tips for. - ppt download

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
except where indicated otherwise tips for.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Writing an adventure by Amanda Wong, Spring Parks Primary School, Vic © Education Services Australia Ltd, 2010, except where indicated otherwise Tips for. - ppt download

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Writing an adventure by Amanda Wong, Spring Parks Primary School, Vic © Education Services Australia Ltd, 2010, except where indicated otherwise Character chart Tips for story writing Looks like ...Acts like ...Talks like ...Feels like ...Sounds like ...

# data[].attributes.headline
60 Narrative Writing Prompts for Kids | Squarehead Teachers

# data[].attributes.subject
60 Narrative Writing Prompts for Kids | Squarehead Teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Suppose you had invented a time machine. Write a story about what you did with it.

2. Write to tell of a day when you were the teacher. What did you do?

3. Write a story about trading places with your favorite TV, movie, or rock star.

4. One day a spaceship lands on the playground of your school . . .

5. Your shoe must have a story to tell. Tell it.

6. Your class grew plants as a science project. One day you looked at your plant and saw

something really strange had grown there.

7. Write a story about what it would be like if you woke up one morning with wings.

8. On your birthday, a strange-looking lady came to you door and handed you a wrapped present. You rattled it. It made a noise. Write a story about this present.

9. Your teacher one day announced that your class was going on a wonderful field trip. Write a story about this field trip. In your story, you can have your class go anywhere you wish.

10. One day, as you were petting and talking to your friend's dog, it answered back! Write a story about this.

11. Write a story about yourself as a hero. What did you do to become a hero? Tell your story.

12. As you walked down the hallway at school, you heard some strange music coming from the custodian's closet. What was it? Write a story about it.

13. Tell a story about children who live in a world where there is no such thing as television, computers, or electronic games.

14. A distant relative bequeathed you a strange ring. As you put this ring on, you discover that it has strange powers. What does it look like? What does it do? Tell a story about this ring.

15. Tell a story about your ideal place to live. What would it be like to live here?

16. The teacher comes into the room and places a bag on her desk then leaves. The bag moves and wriggles. Write a story about what is in the paper bag.

17. Everyone has a day in his or her life that was extra special or dreams about what he or she would do on a special day. Write a story about a special day you have had or imagine you might have.

18. Every day you pass a door. It's always closed and locked. One day, as you pass, you notice that the door is open. You step inside. Write a story about what was on the other side of that door.

19. Tell a story about what happened when you traveled on a wagon pulled by horses.

20. Tell a story about a day in which everything went wrong.

21. Imagine you could travel to the future and live there. Think of what you think the future would be like. How different would it be from today? Now, write a story about living in the future.

22. Imagine you could go to any place you wanted for as long as you wanted any time you wanted. What place would you visit? Think about what you would do there. Write a story about a visit to a really neat place.

23. Pretend that you lived in colonial times. Think about what your life would be like, how it would be different living more than 200 years ago. Now, write a story about a young person (or yourself) living in George Washington's day.

24. Novels are fun to read because the action keeps you interested, and the characters almost become your friends. Think of a book you really liked. Imagine that you were a new character in this book {choose a book your class has read}. Write a story about what happened.

25. Imagine you woke up one morning and found that you had switched places with a dog or a cat. Think what it would be like. What would you do? Write a story of your day as a dog or a cat.

26. What if you had a personal genie who would grant your every wish? What would your life be like? Think of some of the details. Write a story about having a personal genie.

27. Imagine you had a car that would take you anywhere you wanted to go for one day. Think of where you went in that car and what you did. Write a story about that day.

28. Everyone has a favorite season of the year. What is your favorite season? What do you like to do? Write a story about your favorite season.

29. Imagine one morning there's a knock at your front door. You open the door, and to your great surprise, you find an alien standing there. What do you do? What does it look like? Write

a story about your encounter with this alien.

30. On your way to school one morning you see a huge truck speeding down the road. Suddenly, the back door of the truck opens and a large, mysterious box falls off the back of the truck. It sits there in the road. What is in the box? What do you do? Write a story about this mysterious box.

31. One spring day a skunk wanders into your classroom. What are the results? Write a story about the skunk that visited school.

32. Imagine you had a time machine that you could take only to the past. Where would you choose to go? Think of what you would do there, what it would the like. Write a story of your adventure in the past.

33. One day you are sitting under a large tree. An acorn hits you on the head, and you look up. There, on the branch above you sits a squirrel, laughing at you. The squirrel then looks you square in the eye, begins to talk to you, and asks you to return its acorn. What would you do?

What would happen if you encountered a talking squirrel? Write a story about the experience.

34. Imagine a world where there was no money. What would people do? What would life be like? Write a story about living in a world without any money.

35. There are times when we all wish, even for just a moment, that we could be someone else for a day. Who would you choose to be for that day? What would you do? Think of some details of your day. Now write a story about what your day was like as that person.

36. In a recent disaster, there were some kids who did some heroic things. Think what constitutes (makes) a hero. Imagine yourself as one. Now write a story in which you were a hero/heroine in a tough situation.

37. A little old lady gave you and a friend some magical glitter and told you to sprinkle it on your hair and something special would happen. What happened when you tried it? Write a story about this mysterious magical glitter.

38. One day you and your friends walked up to an old, seemingly abandoned house. You couldn't see inside due to the dust and cobwebs on the windows. You decide to see if the door is locked. You try the knob, and it turns. The door creeks open as if it has not opened in years . . . What happens next? What do you find? What do you and your friend do? Write a story about entering that old, seemingly abandoned house.

39. Love comes in all forms. We can love our parents, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a favorite pet, a brother or sister, a place, even a thing. Thing about someone or something you love. Write a story about that person or thing that involves your feelings.

40. Imagine that your sense of smell was more highly developed than everyone else's. What experiences might you have? How might your life change? What would you be able to smell? Write a story about a person with a very highly developed sense of smell.

41. Imagine yourself temporarily lost in a foreign country where you do not know the language. How do you manage to communicate? What might happen to you? Write a story about a day you might have spent lost in a foreign country without knowing the language.

42. Imagine a city project to have every school student do some hours of community service as a part of the required curriculum. What would you choose to do? What do you think it would be like? What people might you meet? What would you be doing to help? Write a story about your day of community service.

43. Sometimes family members or friends embarrass you when other people are around. Think of some times this has happened to you. Think of what could happen. Write a story about some embarrassing incident you might have had and how you coped with it.

44. Now and then you, without meaning to do so, break something that belongs to someone else. Think about what might be broken. Think about what might happen as a result. Now, write a story about accidentally breaking something that belonged to someone else and the story of what happened as a result.

45. One day your teacher must go home. Your teacher leaves, telling you that someone else will teach the class for the rest of the time. Who do you think will replace the teacher? What happens as a result? Write a story about a time your teacher had to go home, and someone

else took over the class.

46. Imagine you opened your own restaurant. Tell the name of your restaurant. Explain what the restaurant looks like, who works there, and what you serve.

47. Describe your favorite character from a book, a movie, or television.

48. Write a story titled, "My Journey on a Pirate Ship." You and your friends can star in the story.

49. If you could have any animal for a pet, what would it be? Describe the pet and how you would take care of it.

50. Do you have any brothers or sisters? If you do, tell what they're like. If not, tell whether or not you would like to have a brother or sister.

51. If you could have lunch with any famous person who would it be? What would you talk about with this person?

52. How old were you four years ago? Describe some things you can do now that you could not do then.

53. If you could be on any game show, what would it be? Describe what happens when you're on the show.

54. Describe several ways a person your age can earn money.

55. If you could spend an afternoon with one member of your extended family, who would it be? Tell why you chose this person and tell what you do together.

56. Which superpower would you most like to have- invisibility, super strength, or the ability to fly? Describe what kids of things you would do with your powers.

57. Think of a time when you've won something. Tell what you won and how you won it.

58. Invent a new kind of sandwich. Describe what is on it and how you would make it.

59. Describe one thing you're really good at.

60. Imagine you were twenty feet tall. Describe what life would be like. How would it be different from your life now?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1. Suppose you had invented a time machine. Write a story about what you did with it. 2. Write to tell of a day when you were the teacher. What did you do? 3. Write a story about trading places with your favorite TV, movie, or rock star. 4. One day...

# data[].attributes.headline
55 Creative Writing Story Starters ⋆ Journal Buddies

# data[].attributes.subject
55 Creative Writing Story Starters ⋆ Journal Buddies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Need Story Prompts & Starters? We have some great ones for you! With these new creative writing story starters, students will enjoy 55 fun boosts of creativity. Each idea gives students a starting point from which they can take any number of directions. They'll think about what they would do if they found $1000 on the ground or what would happen if one of their best friends was elected President.

For extra fun, encourage students to share their stories with one another after writing. They'll be amazed to see how many different ideas they came up with from the same short story starter! Promote imagination and adventure with these new journal prompts and creative writing story starters. Regardless of whether they write silly, scary, or serious stories, students will love the chance to write something unique!

Daily writing offers many benefits to students, but the ability to explore new worlds is undoubtedly one of the most important. So put these creative writing story starters on double duty and use them as journal prompts for kids as well! Whether they're writing creatively or considering a topic of personal reflection, journaling improves critical thinking skills and encourages imagination.

When students write on a regular basis, they gain more confidence in their schoolwork and in their own ideas. Journaling is a powerful way to empower your students both inside and outside of the classroom.

Story Prompts: Creative Writing Story Starters for Kids!

1. You become a character in your favorite video game, and...

2. Your grandma comes to town and brings an unexpected surprise...

3. You are an astronaut who finds something strange on the moon...

4. Your parents tell you that you're moving across the country.

5. An alien comes to Earth, and...

6. At the beach, you find a special seashell...

7. At summer camp, the boys and girls wage a prank war against one another.

8. Every time a dog barks, something unusual happens...

9. You learn that you are heir to a throne...

10. At the library, you find a photo in a book.

11. The last seconds on the clock are ticking, and the ball is in your hands. What happens next?

12. You get stuck in an elevator with...

13. In the backyard, your dog finds a mysterious necklace...

14. Your best friend is elected President.

15. At the mall, you walk by a mannequin that looks just like you. Something odd is happening...

16. You find an old photo of your grandmother, and see that she was a famous actress...

17. You receive a letter in the mail saying that you've won $10,000. What do you do?

18. Your favorite athlete shows up at one of your games-but as a player on the other team!

19. Your bicycle runs away from home. How do you find it?

20. You discover a magic button that will...

21. You suspect the school library might be haunted...

22. You come home to find your cat eating a bowl of ice cream. What happens next?

23. You win a contest on the radio for...

24. Three kids get locked in the mall. What do they decide to do?

25. You travel to the prairie and see...

26. You switch places for a day with your favorite celebrity.

27. You're a race car driver with an embarrassing secret.

28. Your favorite singer agrees to perform an exclusive show in your basement.

29. You come home from school to find a box on your porch. What's inside?

30. At your birthday party, you receive a very special present...

31. Your luggage gets lost at the airport and you accidentally open the wrong bag.

32. Your class gets snowed in at school. What do you do?

33. You show up at school, but you can't remember where of your classes are or who anyone is.

34. You switch places for a day with your dad.

35. In the back of your closet, you find a basketball jersey...

36. You find out that your teacher used to be...

37. The pizza delivery person brings you something you didn't order. What is it?

38. You find $1000 on the ground, and...

39. Your family wins the lottery.

40. You discover your parents are spies...

41. You become the youngest person ever to set a world record for...

42. You and your best friend end up on the set of your favorite TV show. What happens?

43. You take a ride on a tornado, and...

44. You run into some trouble while camping...

45. There is a magic swing at the park that will take you to...

46. The power goes out, and you're home alone...

47. One day, there is a very strange weather report that says...

48. Everywhere you go, you keep hearing a song that no one else can hear...

49. You find a map leading to buried treasure, but it's buried under the principal's house!

50. You hear an ad on the radio for a magic product that will...

51. You stumble upon a cure for __________. What do you do with it?

52. On Christmas Eve, you hear a strange noise on the roof...

53. You're in the school play and worried about forgetting your lines.

54. You get home from the zoo and find a baby monkey in your trunk! What do you do?

55. You win a cooking contest for your famous __________ recipe.

215 More Story Writing Ideas

There is no need to stop at just 55 story starter ideas! We offer you loads more free story prompts on a variety of topics. Here are some of our favorites. Take a look!

And here is an awesome story starter generator resource.

Until next time, write on...
If you enjoyed these Creative Writing Story Starters,
please share them on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest.
I appreciate it!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creative Writing Story Starters for Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Need Story Prompts & Starters? We have some great ones for you! With these new creative writing story starters, students will enjoy 55 fun boosts of creativity. Each idea gives students a starting point from which they can take any number of directions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Story Starters: Multi-Genre Writing Prompts for Kids | Scholastic.com

# data[].attributes.subject
Story Starters: Multi-Genre Writing Prompts for Kids | Scholastic.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Story Starters: Multi-Genre Writing Prompts for Kids | Scholastic.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scholastic's multi-genre Story Starters writing activity generates creative writing prompts for kids in PreK to first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Often, after the climactic action, a few questions will remain unresolved for the reader, even if all the conflict has been resolved. The resolution is where those lingering questions will be answered. It may be that in a short story the resolution will only be a brief paragraph or two. But, in most cases it will still be necessary to include as an ending immediately after the climax can feel too abrupt and leave the reader feeling unfulfilled.

Be sure to check out our own complete guide to writing perfect paragraphs here.

An easy way to explain resolution to students who are struggling to grasp the concept is to point to the traditional resolution of fairy tales, the "And they all lived happily ever after" ending. This weather forecast for the future allows the reader to take their leave. Have the student consider the emotions they want to leave the reader with when crafting their resolution.

While usually the action is complete by the end of the climax, it is in the resolution that if there is a twist be found it will appear - think of movies such as The Usual Suspects. To pull this off convincingly usually requires considerable skill on the part of student writer, but it may well form a challenging extension exercise for those more gifted storytellers among your students.

The Parting Words:

Once students have completed their story they can then go back and edit for grammar, vocabulary choice, spelling etc. but not before! As mentioned, there is a craft to storytelling. as well as an art. When accurate grammar, perfect spelling, and immaculate sentence structures are pushed at the outset they can cause a storytelling paralysis. For this reason it is important that when we encourage the students to write a story we give them license to make the mechanical mistakes in their use of language that they can work on and fix later.

Good narrative writing is a very complex skill to develop and will take the student years to become competent in. It challenges not only the student's technical abilities with language, but also her creative faculties. The use of writing frames, word banks, mind maps, and visual prompts can all give valuable support as students develop the wide-ranging and challenging skills required to produce a successful piece of narrative writing. But, at the end of it all, as with any craft, practice and more practice is at the heart of the matter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to write an excellent Narrative - Literacy Ideas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Often, after the climactic action, a few questions will remain unresolved for the reader, even if all the conflict has been resolved. The resolution is where those lingering questions will be answered. It may be that in a short story the resolution will only be a brief paragraph or two.

# data[].attributes.body
By Phil Cummings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The sun rose on a crisp, cloudy day. The sandpiper stretched its wings in the chilling breeze. It knew it was time to leave so it took flight.

Feathers by Phil Cummings and Phil Lesnie is a calming yet thought provoking picture book that takes the reader on a journey over lands filled with hope, fear, sadness and joy. As we follow the yearly migratory flight of the sandpiper we see the countries that play an important role in its survival. We watch the bird as it soars over snowy landscapes, lands near flood waters and finds safety amongst reeds in the water.

Feathers raises many issues but a big one is the time to reflect on how lucky we are to live in Australia. The countries that the sandpiper flies over on it's yearly flight have been hit hard by earthquake (China) Civil unrest (Myanmar) Flooding (Cambodia) but its final resting place is in Australia - safe and disaster free.

Feathers has so much to offer - it is a worrying yet heart warming read and one which should trigger some deep conversations about how we can help those who are less fortunate than us.

It is a story about annual bird migration - which may not seem so important but it is. The numbers of many of these migratory birds are dropping drastically because of loss of habitat.

These birds need to land in different places all over the world - see the East Asian-Australasian Flyway map - and if they dont, eggs will not hatch or if they do hatch, the chick may not be fully developed, chicks may get eaten by feral animals or not have enough food to eat to survive the long flight back to Australia.

Phil Lesnie's illustrations bring so much emotion to the story through the ever changing light in the sky - we can feel the pain of the people escaping war, the worry of the people surrounded by flood and the fear of those whose houses have fallen down. We can see the strength of the sandpiper as it flies on it's pathway seeking out food, shelter and then home.

Feathers is a poignant read that focuses on human destruction of the world we live in. Read this story with your class or children at home. Take the time to think about how you can make a difference in the world we live in - so that war is eliminated and habitat is saved.
So what can you do after you have read this book? Sustainability

Why do these birds need to migrate?

Find out about which birds migrate each year.

Read Jeannie Baker's book - Circle to learn more about the migration of the Godwit.

How is Australia causing issues for migratory birds? Can you write a letter to the local government to discuss this and urge them to stop the destruction of habitat?

Human Rights

What does safety mean to you? Where did you feel safe in the story?

Why does Mia feel lucky?

How can we help those who have been affected by floods, earthquakes and war? Are all these acts purely natural disasters or have humans played a role in exacerbating the situation?

Explore the UN's rights of the child. Would all the children in this story have their rights?

Literacy

Explore the feather - what does it look like, feel like and sound like? Explore the bird - look, feel, sound and then explore the landscape. Use adjectives, adverbs and verbs to explore these nouns.

Choose another migratory bird and write a story about where they travel and what they might see .

Geography Here are some great articles to read about the demise of the migratory bird: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2017/05/migratory-shorebirds http://birdlife.org.au/documents/Shorebirds-FactSheet.pdf http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/migratory-species/migratory-birds http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/project-underway-save-endangered-migratory-birds-pelican-island/7279234

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feathers by Phil Cummings and Phil Lesnie

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The sun rose on a crisp, cloudy day. The sandpiper stretched its wings in the chilling breeze. It knew it was time to leave so it took flight. Feathers by Phil Cummings and Phil Lesnie is a calming yet thought provoking picture book that takes the reader on a journey over lands filled with...

# data[].attributes.headline
What *does* improve children’s writing? | David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.subject
What *does* improve children’s writing? | David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In my last post I discussed evidence that suggests grammar teaching does not lead to an improvement in children's writing. Although it seems implausible that grammar teaching would not be positively correlated with writing outcomes, there's a lot of evidence that is strongly suggestive that what I prefer to believe may not in fact actually be true.

I've written enough about cognitive bias to know that I am predisposed to look for evidence that supports my preferences and dismiss evidence that contradicts them. The point of evidence is that it forces us to confront the extent to which our intuitions map against objective reality, and to that extent at least I feel the need to explore the idea that I might be wrong.

So, although I struggle with the thought that grammatical knowledge would not lead to greater proficiency in writing, I'm willing to accept that grammar teaching may be counter productive for all sorts of reasons. The grammatical concepts may not be carefully sequenced, the teaching itself might be focussed simply on learning meta-linguistic terminology, the teaching could be focussed on performance rather than learning, and so on. Another issue could be opportunity cost. It might be that time spent teaching grammar is time that could be more profitably spent on some other activity more likely to improve children's writing.

Students tend to get a lot of writing practice in school and so, for the opportunity cost argument to work, it would have to be the case that what children spend their time doing in English lessons and elsewhere is more likely to lead to improvement. If, for the moment, we accept that grammar teaching doesn't improve children's writing, there are at least three questions we should consider:
1. Is children's writing as good as we would want it to be?
Broadly, no. Every teacher will know that although some children write wonderfully well, in many cases written responses are wooden, technically inaccurate and do a poor job of expressing complex thoughts. My suspicion is that there is probably be a Matthew Effect in operation; those children who we might describe as 'word-rich' start their school career with a linguistic advantage - they have heard more words, reach more and thus have greater vocabularies and more experience of the written word than their 'word poor' peers. A 1988 study suggests that 9 year olds at the 90th percentile read almost 2.5 million words a year outside of school, whereas a child at the 10th percentile will have been exposed to around 50,000 words. It takes the bottom 10% a whole year what the top 10% read in two days! Those who begin school with this sort of advantage require little in the way of teaching - their ability to write (at least to some extent) is imbibed osmotically from the sheer quantity of written material they encounter. But what of everyone else?

I've suggested before that our ability to write is linked to our ability to speak. We can only write down that which we are able to say. Some children are very good at making connections and explaining their thoughts but struggle to write them down. They are limited to only being able to express their thoughts in spoken language - they're unable to mentally translate into written language because they do not possess the vocabulary and structures of written language. They know that if they wrote down what they have said aloud it would no longer make sense.

Another problem is the embedding of bad habits through poorly constructed writing practice. I call this the capital letter problem. Children often know that their writing is inaccurate or clunky. They know they should use capital letters, spell correctly and avoid punctuation errors but they don't know these things well enough. Anything that occupies out attention reduces our capacity to think. This capacity is strictly limited and if we're juggling complex ideas we wont have much attention left to think about accuracy. Skilled writers will have automatised these basics so that they quite literally don't have to think about them.

I think we can agree that, on average, children's writing is not as good as we would want it to be.
2. What sorts of things do English teachers do to improve children's writing?
English - and by extension writing - tends to get a pretty generous allocation of curriculum time in both primary and secondary schools, and children also practice writing in many other curriculum areas. All this represents a huge opportunity for improving children's writing. So, what do teachers - especially English teachers - spend their time doing?

Greg Ashman has recently written that the teaching of writing is backwards. Typically, students are asked to write something and then, when they make mistakes, teachers spend their time producing a written commentary on how to correct these errors. He suggests that it would be more sensible to give children precise instruction on how to write before asking them to do the writing. This may seem obvious - and many teachers will of course be working hard to model and scaffold writing tasks effectively - but in my experience of working with teachers in a great many different settings, this is all too familiar. We do this because although we recognise good writing when we see it, too few teachers understand how the 'skill' of writing is actually composed of many thousands of items of propositional knowledge. These items become invisible as they're automatised and so it can be almost impossible for a skilled writer to recognise the components of good writing.

All too often, English teachers expect students to get better at writing by practising writing extended pieces. Obviously this has a place, but it will disproportionately advantage word rich students who already know how to write well. This is bit like expecting people to get better at tennis just by playing tennis or to get better at the piano just by bashing the keys. In many areas of complex skill we know that we have drill the basics. Athletic prowess results from acquiring often minute technical skills; fluent musicianship stems from repeating scales and arpeggios over and over. It makes sense to think that fluent writing is most likely to arise from a similar process, but exactly what this process might look like is something that has not been codified and shared amongst English teachers.
3. What are the most effective methods for improving children's writing?
I'm happy to accept that being able to parse or diagram a sentence bears very little resemblance to the skill of writing. Although it feels intuitively true that mastering the basics of English grammar could only be useful, let's assume I'm wrong. What else then does the research advocate?

The picture is a little bleak. The paper by Wyse and Torgerson which concluded that grammar teaching is ineffective says that, "Although the numbers of robust experimental trials relevant to effective teaching in schools have increased, our analysis of trials in relation to the teaching of writing suggests that there are still too many studies that are not of sufficient methodological quality. In particular, too many studies are weak in relation to allocation of pupils to groups, and the measures for writing remain a challenge."

With this caveat they make the following recommendations:

The most recent meta-analyses of high-quality research studies on writing suggest that, rather than emphasise grammar, the following practices could be selected as a priority for teaching writing in primary/elementary education: (a) an increase in the amount of time that pupils have for writing; (b) adoption of a process approach to writing; (c) creation of a classroom environment that is appropriately supportive of pupils' attempts at learning to write better; (d) development of pupils' writing skills, strategies and knowledge, including ways of planning writing; (e) a use of assessment for learning techniques; (f) a use of computers as part of the process of writing; (g) a use of writing meaningfully across different subject areas (Graham et al., 2016; Wyse, 2017). The robustness of the evidence underpinning these practices is built not on single studies but on multiple RCTs and experimental trials.

Let's briefly consider each suggestion in turn.
(a) an increase in the amount of time that pupils have for writing
As noted, children already spend an awful lot of time writing. If current practices are ineffective, simply doing more of the same is unlikely to result in an improvement. My advice to teachers is to ask students to write less. Specifically, if teachers don't explicitly value the process of writing, then students are likely to learn that how they write is relatively unimportant. I'd rather see children doing shorter more focussed writing exercises such as those advocated in my Slow Writing posts.
(b) adoption of a process approach to writing
The idea here is to focus on the process rather than the product of writing in order to encourage a more metacognitive approach to the act of writing. This is essentially the idea behind Slow Writing and one I'm happy to endorse. However, what children write is as important as how they write and if we entirely neglect the product, that is also likely to have negative consequences. I see the 'process approach' as a form of scaffolding and, like all scaffolding, teachers need to have a plan for removing it to prevent children becoming dependent on it.
(c) creation of a classroom environment that is appropriately supportive of pupils' attempts at learning to write better
I'm not really sure what this means. If it means decorating the physical environment with helpful reminders and motivational quotes, then - as I explain here - it's probably not a good idea. If it means creating an environment where children are encouraged to behave well, work hard and value effort, then it's almost certainly a good idea.
(d) development of pupils' writing skills, strategies and knowledge, including ways of planning writing
It's somewhat tautological to suggest that the best way to improve children's writing is by developing their writing skills. It's obviously right that children need to develop the knowledge to write well, the question is, how? I'd agree that it makes sense to devote some time to effective planning but again, do we know what effective planning actually is? Does it look the same for all types of writing? Should students to taught to use different kinds of graphic organisers? Committing curriculum to planning may be useful, but will also be limiting. Eventually children need to develop effective mental representations of what good writing looks and feels like so this approach must address how students will internalise the idea of planning.
(e) a use of assessment for learning techniques
Again, it depends on what you mean by assessment for learning. I've written extensively on how we get AfL wrong and so it should go without saying that we would need to avoid these pitfalls. In the worst case, teachers can end up justifying the kind of backwards teaching Ashman has written about as an AfL technique. Let's not do that.
(f) a use of computers as part of the process of writing
As a professional writer, I always use a computer to write. As a classroom teacher, I rarely did. If the aim of English teaching is - in part - to support children's performance in national exams, then they won't be helped by spending too much time using computers. Unless they learn to hand write fluently, they will be at an enormous disadvantage. I suspect that underlying this recommendation is the notion that using computers is inherently motivating. This is a mistake. Computers are a useful tool, just as a pencil is. It may be true that some children - especially those with terrible hand writing - will prefer to use a computer, nobody gets better at something by avoiding doing it. Also, there's the additional problem that computers can be an absorbing distraction. If my experience is anything to go by, I spend more time stopping children using Word Art than on improving their writing.
(g) a use of writing meaningfully across different subject areas
This is something that happens as a matter of course in most primary settings and is definitely something that secondary schools ought to be better at. Non-English teachers sometimes feel resentful of the idea that they ought to be developing their students' writing skills, but this is terribly misguided. Writing is different in different curriculum areas. It would be foolish indeed for geography teachers to rely on their English teacher colleagues to teach the kind of writing that works best in geography. It's also worth considering that time spent thinking how best to express ideas about content will not only improve students' ability to write, it could also improve their ability to think about the content they're learning. Who wouldn't want that?

In conclusion, if teachers are doing all of the above exceptionally well then maybe they have a solid argument for not teaching grammar at any point. I'm not and never have argued that grammar teaching should replace any other part of the writing process. My position is a backlash against the fact that for decades, schools in England have systematically avoided teaching grammar and as a result are now ill-equipped to do it well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What *does* improve children's writing? - David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In my last post I discussed evidence that suggests grammar teaching does not lead to an improvement in children's writing.

# data[].attributes.headline
6 Clever Ways To Achieve The Perfect Ending To Your Story - Writer's Edit

# data[].attributes.subject
6 Clever Ways To Achieve The Perfect Ending To Your Story - Writer's Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You've done all the hard work. The amazing story you've been writing is 99% finished; now you just have to end it. Cue aimless staring at the computer screen, right?

There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart" - Alex de Campi

Ending a story can be an excruciating and frustrating experience. We all want that perfect conclusion, one that complements and fulfils the purpose of the story.

We especially want an ending that leaves ourselves and our audience satisfied. Achieving this is not as easy as it sounds; an ending takes on a lot of gravity when you realise there's no coming back once it's done.

Often, a reader's most long-lasting memory of your story will be its ending, so it's important to agonise over it just as much as you did your faultless first paragraph.

Thankfully, there's a limit to the numbers of ways you can tie up your tale. The way your piece ends should largely be connected to how you've written the rest of the story. You should know what you were trying to say when you set out to write, and thus have an idea of the impression you want to leave when the story is over. There is a theory that stories can only have five possible outcomes, but to make things even easier, here are six specific types of endings you can consider to help you finish your masterpiece.

1. Resolved ending

A resolved ending is great if you want everything neatly packaged and put away. All the plotlines and character threads are concluded. There's no conjecture and no questions to be asked. The fate of everyone in the story is known and it is clear how the characters might live on into the future. This is good if you are writing a singular novel or concluding a series.

Examples that immediately come to mind are mysteries. Despite the bulk of a mystery novel being clouded in suspense and confusion, everything is illuminated for the reader at the climactic end of the story. Usually, one or more people unravel the mystery and expose the culprit or cause of distress. A style that commonly employs this ending is the 'whodunnit' story; an awesome example to check out is Stephen Donaldson's The Man Who Tried To Get Away.

Fairy-tales also use resolved endings, almost every time. Don't be tricked into thinking this type of ending has to be all roses, though. A story can be resolved without being happily resolved. Take a look at these original fairy-tales that aren't so Hollywood-perfect.

This is basically the opposite to a resolved ending. The overarching plot is left unfinished and the ultimate outcome of the characters' story arcs is unknown based on the textual information. This might be used to entice readers to use their imagination and create their own ending, satisfying themselves. More commonly, it's used to set up for a sequel. References are usually made to tasks still to be done or conflicts still to be determined, essentially making the book one big chapter of a larger story.

Obviously, this is one of the easiest endings to write. Readers understand nothing has to be wrapped up here, but it's still vital to create a sense of excitement and anticipation using an unresolved ending, otherwise people may not be interested in coming back for the second instalment.

There are plenty of famous examples to pay heed to, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Rowling's Harry Potter series, or The Chronicles of Narnia books written by C. S. Lewis.

3. Implied ending

This is often the most tempting ending for an author and the most frustrating for a reader. The conclusion, or 'what happens in the end', isn't explicitly stated or displayed. This is achieved by holding back information or leaving multiple logical explanations up in the air, allowing the reader to make up their own mind. The audience is refused a fully informed outcome. They may be left thinking a range of questions:

'Did he or didn't he?'

'Is she alive or dead?'

'Is it that or is it this?'

'Is the narrator lying or telling the truth?'

This ending is very effective because it creates a talking point and keeps the reader pondering long after they've put down the book. For an author, this is ideal; if readers are thinking about you, they'll likely go looking for more of your work.

A terrific example of this type of ending is Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (also made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio). In this story, there are two explanations for the reader to consider at the end. One is more implied than the other, but both are feasible. Lehane has written so masterfully that he effectively teases the reader, leaving them uncomfortably torn between the two. Personally, it took me a couple of months and a conversation with my mother, who had also read the book, to settle on one ending over the other. See some more examples of ambiguous endings in multiple genres here.

4. Twist in the tail

In theory, a story that ends in this way catches the audience by surprise with a completely unexpected turn of events. As a result, the whole story is usually turned upside down, with a previously believed fact turning out to be false. This may involve a character 'coming back' from the dead, a hero revealing themselves as a villain (or vice versa), or a new and vital piece of information coming to light at the last minute.

A 'twist' ending is good for playing with readers' emotions. You can bring them up quickly or send them crashing down, depending on what route you decide to take with your story. Either way, you can cause a dramatic shift in a reader's attitude.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel (and film) that quickly comes to mind here. The revelation towards the end of the story will have you replaying every previous event in your mind and will completely change your understanding of the novel. Here's a list, topped by Fight Club, which includes six more of the best plot twists seen in literature.

5. Tie-back

To put it simply, a story written in this fashion will begin and end in the same way. The ending is revealed first before the author fills in the details of how that ending came to be. While this may take away some of the suspense for a reader, a clever author is still able to introduce twists and surprises.

A tie-back ending also allows for a very focused method of writing - it's always easier to navigate if you know where you're going, right? It also creates a feeling of balance and equilibrium for the story. American author Kurt Vonnegut had many tips for writers, including that they should 'start as close to the end as possible'.

The Star by Arthur C. Clarke is a nice short example of a tie-back ending; the beginning shows a main character in pain, and the ending ties back to the cause of his pain. Read it online here.

6. Crystal ball

This conclusion goes 'beyond the ending' in a way, looking into the future. It explains what happens to the characters years after the main events of the story. Authors and readers alike may think they want this ending - understandably, they want to see more of their favourite characters - but most of the time, it may not really be necessary.

A common way of writing a 'crystal ball' ending is with an epilogue. An example might be a section in which the perspective is from the main character's child, who was absent from the main story. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows fits nicely into this category, rounding off the series with an epilogue set 19 years after the main story.

* * *

So there you have it! Six endings to consider when finishing your story, novel, or script. Always remember what you set out to achieve and consider the feelings you want to leave with your audience. Last impressions are just as important as first impressions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Clever Ways To Achieve The Perfect Ending To Your Story - Writer's Edit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You've done all the hard work. The amazing story you've been writing is 99% finished; now you just have to end it. Cue aimless staring at the computer screen, right? There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book.

# data[].attributes.headline
Writing the Ending for a Short Story « Find Your Creative Muse

# data[].attributes.subject
Writing the Ending for a Short Story « Find Your Creative Muse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Dave Hood

How do you write an ending for your short story? There is no single method of ending a story. Many writers don't know how their story will end as they write the story. And so the ending emerges as the story is revealed on the page. Other writers know how the story will end before they begin, and so they can focus on the resolution as they write. There is no right or wrong approach.

In this article, I briefly explain the meaning of an ending, how to end your short story, and explain what the ending must do for the reader. I also provide some tips on how to write an ending for a short story or novel.

The Meaning of an Ending

All stories must end with resolution. There must be some answer to the central conflict. When you write the ending, your story must be complete. All unanswered questions posed in the story must be answered. All loose ends must be tied up.

Writer Flannery O'Connor the end is when the story is complete, "when nothing more than relating to the mystery of that character's personality can be show through that particular dramatization." (On Writing Short Stories, edited by Tom Bailey)

An ending can be framed in terms of denouncement, realization, or epiphany. Each has a different shade of meaning.
Denouncement.
The story can end with a closed ending or open ending. In an closed ending, nothing more can happen. For instance, the villain might be killed. In an open ending, the writer leaves questions about what will happen next. For instance, the gunslinger who has just killed the bad guy, rides off into the sunset. The reader is left to imagine what the central character will do next with his life.
Realization
It is less powerful than an epiphany. The central character gains some insight or is enlightened, and then makes some change in his/her life. For instance, the short story Lust by writer Susan Minot ends with a realization: Their blank look tells you the girl their fucking is not there anymore. You seemed to have disappeared. (On Writing Short Stories, edited by Tom Bailey)
Epiphany
James Joyce introduced the technique of epiphany. It is not simply a realization, but a "magical moment, "felt moment", that results in permanent change by the character. James Joyce writes includes an epiphany in the short story Eveline. The threat of repeating her mother's life spurs Eveline's epiphany that she must leave with Frank and embark on a new phase in her life, but this realization is short-lived. As the story ends, she has a second epiphany, which concludes the story.

Ways to End a Short Story

Short stories or novels can end in many ways. Here are a few common ways in which writers conclude their fictional stories:
Twist Ending
Sometimes the writer concludes the story with a twist ending. Readers are lead to believe that a story will end in a particular way, and then it ends in a different way. So the ending is unexpected. For instance, the story can end with a tragic ending, one in which the protagonist dies. The story might end with an ironic ending, which reveals the darker side of human nature, the shadow of man. Kate Chopin's "A Story of an Hour" is concluded with a twist ending.
Resolving Action
Sometimes the story ends with some final action that brings an end to the conflict, complete finality. In Jack London's To Build a Fire", the story ends with the central character freezes to death while on journey to the work camp.
End of the story ending
Sometimes a story ends after it has been told. This is how Tom Franklin's short story "Alaska" ends. The narrator tells the fantastical story, the dream trip, and then ends with..."we would stop playing as if on cue and look at each other, suddenly happy, remembering Alaska, waiting for us."So does William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."
Ambiguous ending
Essentially, the writer crafts an ending in which the story ends, but the reader is left wondering what will happen next. So, there is no permanent resolution to the ending. Another story can be written, which brings total closure to the story. You see this sort of ending in sequels.

What the Ending Must Do

Your ending must tie up loose ends and answer any unanswered questions in the story.

Writing the ending is also as important as your opening. So, you need to write an ending that resonates in the mind of the reader.

The ending must also be a logical outcome of the story. In other words, it must be based on cause and effect.

The ending should also answer the central conflict of the story.

Sometimes the ending ends the story but doesn't mean the end. The reader is left to answer the questions implied by the ending of the story.

If the ending is disappointing, many writers won't recommend that other's read your short story or novel. And it probably won't get published.

Only through finding a meaning to your story will the best ending become possible. That is why theme is so important.

Tips for Writing an Ending

Your ending should provide closure to the story. In the issue of A Writer's Guide to Fiction (Published by Writer Mag), writer Sharon Warner provides five tips for ending a story, which you can use to help create a story with closure. These include:

1. Avoid the to-neat ending. In other words, don't wrap it up and seal it up tight. This approach trivializes your story. Instead, the write the ending until there is almost a new story that will unfold at the end.

2. Look to your beginning to find your ending. In other words, your opening will often suggest how the story should end.

3. Write provisional endings as your story progresses. As you write the draft, think about how it might end. Then write a provisional ending. A short story has a beginning, middle, and end. So, if you are going to write a story, you should be prepared to write a complete story, a story that has an ending. Once the story is written, you can revise the content, including the ending.Let the story speak for itself. Sometimes the best endings focus a step or two away from the central

4. A good story ends loosely. It doesn't tie up all the possibilities that the story presents.

5. Avoid the tendency to summarize. Don't be preachy or didactic. In other words, don't tell the reader what to think about the story. Let the reader discover it through subtext it, make his/her own decisions.

Final Thoughts

Many short stories end with an epiphany. The character experiences a significant revelation or realization. This was a technique introduced by writer James Joyce.

Your ending must resolve the story. That is why we refer to the ending as a resolution. There must be some answer to the conflict-but not necessarily the right answer.

The ending should also lead to some meaning of the story. What does the story, especially the ending, have to say about human nature or the human condition.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Dave Hood How do you write an ending for your short story? There is no single method of ending a story. Many writers don't know how their story will end as they write the story. And so the endin...

# data[].attributes.headline
What *does* improve children’s writing? | David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.subject
What *does* improve children’s writing? | David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In my last post I discussed evidence that suggests grammar teaching does not lead to an improvement in children's writing. Although it seems implausible that grammar teaching would not be positively correlated with writing outcomes, there's a lot of evidence that is strongly suggestive that what I prefer to believe may not in fact actually be true.

I've written enough about cognitive bias to know that I am predisposed to look for evidence that supports my preferences and dismiss evidence that contradicts them. The point of evidence is that it forces us to confront the extent to which our intuitions map against objective reality, and to that extent at least I feel the need to explore the idea that I might be wrong.

So, although I struggle with the thought that grammatical knowledge would not lead to greater proficiency in writing, I'm willing to accept that grammar teaching may be counter productive for all sorts of reasons. The grammatical concepts may not be carefully sequenced, the teaching itself might be focussed simply on learning meta-linguistic terminology, the teaching could be focussed on performance rather than learning, and so on. Another issue could be opportunity cost. It might be that time spent teaching grammar is time that could be more profitably spent on some other activity more likely to improve children's writing.

Students tend to get a lot of writing practice in school and so, for the opportunity cost argument to work, it would have to be the case that what children spend their time doing in English lessons and elsewhere is more likely to lead to improvement. If, for the moment, we accept that grammar teaching doesn't improve children's writing, there are at least three questions we should consider:
1. Is children's writing as good as we would want it to be?
Broadly, no. Every teacher will know that although some children write wonderfully well, in many cases written responses are wooden, technically inaccurate and do a poor job of expressing complex thoughts. My suspicion is that there is probably be a Matthew Effect in operation; those children who we might describe as 'word-rich' start their school career with a linguistic advantage - they have heard more words, reach more and thus have greater vocabularies and more experience of the written word than their 'word poor' peers. A 1988 study suggests that 9 year olds at the 90th percentile read almost 2.5 million words a year outside of school, whereas a child at the 10th percentile will have been exposed to around 50,000 words. It takes the bottom 10% a whole year what the top 10% read in two days! Those who begin school with this sort of advantage require little in the way of teaching - their ability to write (at least to some extent) is imbibed osmotically from the sheer quantity of written material they encounter. But what of everyone else?

I've suggested before that our ability to write is linked to our ability to speak. We can only write down that which we are able to say. Some children are very good at making connections and explaining their thoughts but struggle to write them down. They are limited to only being able to express their thoughts in spoken language - they're unable to mentally translate into written language because they do not possess the vocabulary and structures of written language. They know that if they wrote down what they have said aloud it would no longer make sense.

Another problem is the embedding of bad habits through poorly constructed writing practice. I call this the capital letter problem. Children often know that their writing is inaccurate or clunky. They know they should use capital letters, spell correctly and avoid punctuation errors but they don't know these things well enough. Anything that occupies out attention reduces our capacity to think. This capacity is strictly limited and if we're juggling complex ideas we wont have much attention left to think about accuracy. Skilled writers will have automatised these basics so that they quite literally don't have to think about them.

I think we can agree that, on average, children's writing is not as good as we would want it to be.
2. What sorts of things do English teachers do to improve children's writing?
English - and by extension writing - tends to get a pretty generous allocation of curriculum time in both primary and secondary schools, and children also practice writing in many other curriculum areas. All this represents a huge opportunity for improving children's writing. So, what do teachers - especially English teachers - spend their time doing?

Greg Ashman has recently written that the teaching of writing is backwards. Typically, students are asked to write something and then, when they make mistakes, teachers spend their time producing a written commentary on how to correct these errors. He suggests that it would be more sensible to give children precise instruction on how to write before asking them to do the writing. This may seem obvious - and many teachers will of course be working hard to model and scaffold writing tasks effectively - but in my experience of working with teachers in a great many different settings, this is all too familiar. We do this because although we recognise good writing when we see it, too few teachers understand how the 'skill' of writing is actually composed of many thousands of items of propositional knowledge. These items become invisible as they're automatised and so it can be almost impossible for a skilled writer to recognise the components of good writing.

All too often, English teachers expect students to get better at writing by practising writing extended pieces. Obviously this has a place, but it will disproportionately advantage word rich students who already know how to write well. This is bit like expecting people to get better at tennis just by playing tennis or to get better at the piano just by bashing the keys. In many areas of complex skill we know that we have drill the basics. Athletic prowess results from acquiring often minute technical skills; fluent musicianship stems from repeating scales and arpeggios over and over. It makes sense to think that fluent writing is most likely to arise from a similar process, but exactly what this process might look like is something that has not been codified and shared amongst English teachers.
3. What are the most effective methods for improving children's writing?
I'm happy to accept that being able to parse or diagram a sentence bears very little resemblance to the skill of writing. Although it feels intuitively true that mastering the basics of English grammar could only be useful, let's assume I'm wrong. What else then does the research advocate?

The picture is a little bleak. The paper by Wyse and Torgerson which concluded that grammar teaching is ineffective says that, "Although the numbers of robust experimental trials relevant to effective teaching in schools have increased, our analysis of trials in relation to the teaching of writing suggests that there are still too many studies that are not of sufficient methodological quality. In particular, too many studies are weak in relation to allocation of pupils to groups, and the measures for writing remain a challenge."

With this caveat they make the following recommendations:

The most recent meta-analyses of high-quality research studies on writing suggest that, rather than emphasise grammar, the following practices could be selected as a priority for teaching writing in primary/elementary education: (a) an increase in the amount of time that pupils have for writing; (b) adoption of a process approach to writing; (c) creation of a classroom environment that is appropriately supportive of pupils' attempts at learning to write better; (d) development of pupils' writing skills, strategies and knowledge, including ways of planning writing; (e) a use of assessment for learning techniques; (f) a use of computers as part of the process of writing; (g) a use of writing meaningfully across different subject areas (Graham et al., 2016; Wyse, 2017). The robustness of the evidence underpinning these practices is built not on single studies but on multiple RCTs and experimental trials.

Let's briefly consider each suggestion in turn.
(a) an increase in the amount of time that pupils have for writing
As noted, children already spend an awful lot of time writing. If current practices are ineffective, simply doing more of the same is unlikely to result in an improvement. My advice to teachers is to ask students to write less. Specifically, if teachers don't explicitly value the process of writing, then students are likely to learn that how they write is relatively unimportant. I'd rather see children doing shorter more focussed writing exercises such as those advocated in my Slow Writing posts.
(b) adoption of a process approach to writing
The idea here is to focus on the process rather than the product of writing in order to encourage a more metacognitive approach to the act of writing. This is essentially the idea behind Slow Writing and one I'm happy to endorse. However, what children write is as important as how they write and if we entirely neglect the product, that is also likely to have negative consequences. I see the 'process approach' as a form of scaffolding and, like all scaffolding, teachers need to have a plan for removing it to prevent children becoming dependent on it.
(c) creation of a classroom environment that is appropriately supportive of pupils' attempts at learning to write better
I'm not really sure what this means. If it means decorating the physical environment with helpful reminders and motivational quotes, then - as I explain here - it's probably not a good idea. If it means creating an environment where children are encouraged to behave well, work hard and value effort, then it's almost certainly a good idea.
(d) development of pupils' writing skills, strategies and knowledge, including ways of planning writing
It's somewhat tautological to suggest that the best way to improve children's writing is by developing their writing skills. It's obviously right that children need to develop the knowledge to write well, the question is, how? I'd agree that it makes sense to devote some time to effective planning but again, do we know what effective planning actually is? Does it look the same for all types of writing? Should students to taught to use different kinds of graphic organisers? Committing curriculum to planning may be useful, but will also be limiting. Eventually children need to develop effective mental representations of what good writing looks and feels like so this approach must address how students will internalise the idea of planning.
(e) a use of assessment for learning techniques
Again, it depends on what you mean by assessment for learning. I've written extensively on how we get AfL wrong and so it should go without saying that we would need to avoid these pitfalls. In the worst case, teachers can end up justifying the kind of backwards teaching Ashman has written about as an AfL technique. Let's not do that.
(f) a use of computers as part of the process of writing
As a professional writer, I always use a computer to write. As a classroom teacher, I rarely did. If the aim of English teaching is - in part - to support children's performance in national exams, then they won't be helped by spending too much time using computers. Unless they learn to hand write fluently, they will be at an enormous disadvantage. I suspect that underlying this recommendation is the notion that using computers is inherently motivating. This is a mistake. Computers are a useful tool, just as a pencil is. It may be true that some children - especially those with terrible hand writing - will prefer to use a computer, nobody gets better at something by avoiding doing it. Also, there's the additional problem that computers can be an absorbing distraction. If my experience is anything to go by, I spend more time stopping children using Word Art than on improving their writing.
(g) a use of writing meaningfully across different subject areas
This is something that happens as a matter of course in most primary settings and is definitely something that secondary schools ought to be better at. Non-English teachers sometimes feel resentful of the idea that they ought to be developing their students' writing skills, but this is terribly misguided. Writing is different in different curriculum areas. It would be foolish indeed for geography teachers to rely on their English teacher colleagues to teach the kind of writing that works best in geography. It's also worth considering that time spent thinking how best to express ideas about content will not only improve students' ability to write, it could also improve their ability to think about the content they're learning. Who wouldn't want that?

In conclusion, if teachers are doing all of the above exceptionally well then maybe they have a solid argument for not teaching grammar at any point. I'm not and never have argued that grammar teaching should replace any other part of the writing process. My position is a backlash against the fact that for decades, schools in England have systematically avoided teaching grammar and as a result are now ill-equipped to do it well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What *does* improve children's writing? - David Didau: The Learning Spy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In my last post I discussed evidence that suggests grammar teaching does not lead to an improvement in children's writing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Looking at Writing was developed by Reading Rockets research director Dr. Joanne Meier and teacher-researcher Cathy Meaney. Cathy has over 15 years of experience as a regular and special education teacher. She received a B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from Cornell University and a M.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a previous series of posts I wrote about RAFTs, a powerful strategy that engages students into writing, a means to coach students to improve writing, and an approach that when differentiated helps students at varying skills to success at a respectful pace. By popular demand, what follows are all 3 articles in one blog for easy distribution. The original posts are also available for those who prefer that the content be digestible in smaller meals: Part I - Part II - Part III

Bon Appetite!

John McCarthy, Ed.S. ( Twitter/ Pinterest/ Google+)

For more of John's articles in other publications check: http://openingpaths.org/blog/publications
1st Article - RAFTs Basics: RAFTing the Writing Rapids
How do you get students engaged into writing? Sometimes this question feels like an exercise in futility, used as for abstract debate for the sake of venting frustration. But there are times when the answer to this question is simple: Make the writing interesting and meaningful.

Some people like to write. Lots of people like to tackle an issue or topic of personal interest. While this concept is simple to focus on, the implementation can feel too complex and frustrating. One solution-I would emphasize this is just one-is using RAFTs as a writing strategy. It creates highly engaging topics, and provides a structure that students can easily understand and teachers can coach writing. RAFTs are also great for differentiating based on diverse skill levels.

RAFTs stands for Role, Audience, Format, Topic + strong verb. Here's the meaning of each part:

Provides a perspective or point of view for the writer. Students use the role as way to connect directly with the content focus.

Gives focus to who the writer is communicating. Being mindful of the audience, teachers can coach students on perspectives to explore that the target audience may be receptive. This leads students to think about word choice and what details will resonate with their audience.

Format: Letter responding to marriage proposal

Provides the medium through which the writer will communicate. The product, when assigned, is usually how the teacher needs to evaluate the work. Sometimes the format is left blank to allow the students to chose the product that appeals to them, such as a podcast, video, story, poem, or some other medium. So long as the academic criteria is clear, the format can be open-ended.

Topic + strong verb: Wedding or Eloping, which could best bring peace to our families?

Communicates to the writer the focus of the RAFT assignment. The topic gives the context for the writing based on the academic outcomes. It creates the scenario or approach towards a real world issue that the students will communicate about. Including a strong verb generates engagement by potentially creating a call to action.
Unit Anticipatory Set
As an opener for a traditional or Project Based Learning (PBL) unit, RAFTs engages students into the big idea and essential learnings to be explored. Crafting a topic that tightly aligns with the learning outcomes gives students context for learning, and opens opportunity for generating students' need to know more.
Formative Assessment and Feedback
RAFTs make for formative assessment in the middle of a unit. Students demonstrate their understanding that should go beyond the facts to analysis or evaluation of concepts. Used as an individual or small group activity, students process their understandings and connections for deeper knowledge. The results will better prepare them for the later work of the unit. Teachers can use the RAFTS products to give formative feedback to the students to firm up content knowledge, and to coach writing skills.

At the end of a traditional or PBL unit, RAFTs are useful as the final assessment of content knowledge and answering the driving or essential question regarding the big focus of the entire unit. As the final product, students connect the work towards a real world outcome. The key is crafting a topic that pushes students to address an issue within a scenario or for a real world audience. We could revise the Romeo and Juliet example for this purpose:

Focus: Understand how "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare represents the challenges for effective communication and conflict resolution.

Role: Concerned Citizen

Audience: Facebook Monitors and School Community Stakeholders

Format: Letter or recorded multimedia

Topic: Advocate for improved support/awareness against cyber bullying

Once students experience the RAFTs structure and become familiar with it, they embrace it. After awhile, let the students come up with their own Role, Audience, Format, and/or Topic. Or let them develop a combination of certain parts. This gives them voice as to how they want to construct the writing, which increases their buy-in and engagement.
Return to the beginning 2nd Article - Craft of RAFTs: Coaching Writing through RAFTs
During workshops, I sometimes survey the teachers in the room:

Rate yourself on a 5 pt scale.

A five equals, "I can write for publication with confidence."

A one equals, "I do not like to write, preferring to avoid it when I can."

Yes, I know... rating scales should avoid an odd number range because people tend to gravitate to the middle number, in this case the 3. But in this instance, who wants to be a 3? If your surgeon self-rated his/her skills at a 3 on a 5 pt scale, wouldn't you get a second opinion?While a self-rating of 1 is rare, 30% of the audience, at best, self-rate a 4 or 5. Writing skills are so important for students, yet the perception of less than half of their teachers feel confortable or confident with their own writing skills. Such revelations is food for a conversation on a later article, the intent now is to emphasize the need for writing activities that provides a structure for effective coaching and learning.

In a previous article, I talked about RAFTs as a framework for engaging students into writing for purposeful topics. Mentoring students to become better writers is an important process. RAFTs is an effective strategy that can support the coaching process. 6+1 Writing Traits by Education Northwest is the reference that I use in the following conversation. The rubrics are useful for coaching.

Students quickly pick-up how RAFTs work. When combined with teaching the writing process, there are rich opportunities for coaching students on developing their author's craft. Teachers facilitate feedback conversation where they can pose questions that enable students to uncover the editing needs of their writing. Let's use a RAFTs example from the previous blog:

Role: When the writing needs clarity about author's intent, students should reflect on the role they are playing, and the intentions and needs of the point of view. This could affect word choice and details that may need to be added and/or changed.

Some Coaching Questions:

Word Choice: If the story happened today, what words would Juliet, age 13, use to express her emotions a marriage and family?

Details: What details would Juliet share with Romeo to convince him regarding the topic?

Details: Which of your details would Juliet have more to share based on her experiences from the play?

Audience: The details and organization of the writing may not communicate clearly to the target audience. Coaching questions could lead to the student considering their audience's needs and what information would elicit a positive response. Word choice, organization, and details would be areas for writing instruction. Sentence fluency could be another factor depending on the reading level of the audience. Lower elementary students may need a simpler sentence structure than an adult audience. Do we want a 6th grade sentence simplicity or more complex writing structure for an academic audience?

Some Coaching Questions:

Organization & details: How are your main ideas ordered so that Romeo would be most receptive? Let's talk about each together.

Word Choice & Sentence Fluency: Knowing Romeo's personality, how might he react to the tone of this writing?

Details: Let's identify discussion points that Romeo might need for context and/or information to be convinced by Juliet.

Format: Our choice of medium should align with the target audience. Teachers and students explore together the question: Does the medium allow for effective communication of content and complex ideas as intended by the author (Role)? This question looks at organization, details, and word choice that are appropriate to the medium. For example, PowerPoint and Keynote presentations work effectively with minimal text.

Some Coaching Questions:

Presentation, Organization, and Word Choice: How should this medium be used to keep Romeo's attention?

Presentation, Word Choice, and Details: What could be used to connect with Romeo through emotions and/or logic?

Topic: How well does the content align to the topic? Organization and details are important coaching conversations to ensure that the focus is addressed.

Some Coaching Questions:

Organization and Details: Let's identify where the content deeply supports the topic and where the information may not relate to Juliet's discussion points.

Details and Word Choice: Where do the main ideas help Romeo agree, and where might he respond with a counter argument based on the topic?

There are more questions that teachers could devise based on the RAFTs components, the content of the writing, and the students' understanding and intentions regarding the topic. These coaching conversations will give students a scaffold structure for understanding the assignment and how authors craft writing for a purpose. During the course of a few RAFTs experiences, students will strengthen their dialog for coaching each other by using the components as feedback starters. The teacher's modeling of the conversation will guide students to coaching each other, which leads to empowering them as stronger writers.
Return to the beginning 3rd Article - DI: Differentiating Writing through RAFTs
RAFTs can ignite engagement and context for learning. Planned with forethought, students can explore a need or problem that exists in the world beyond the classroom walls. An important consideration is: How do I differentiate RAFTs to support my diverse learners? The solution is simple, yet has layers of possibilities when implemented based on an understanding of your students.

The key step with differentiating RAFTs is provide 3 to 4 variations of the prompt. Giving students one RAFTs to unpack can be engaging and productive. Consider than the possibilities when students have several choose from.

The Learner's role in Differentiation is based on Readiness, Interests, and Learning Profiles. Use the Learning Profile Cards strategy to collect data on students that will inform differentiation of RAFTs that follow.

Interests are activated by giving students several options to choose from. Take this even further by having a blank option-allowing for students to craft their own RAFTs based on the topic-a great way to foster Student Voice.

Learning Profiles address how learners make sense of their learning. Learning styles, brain-based learning, and multiple intelligence profiles are generally approaches used for this. With RAFTs, structure the prompt choices based on any of these approaches, such as these examples:

When learning profiles are intentionally integrated into the prompts, teachers can assign them to specific students based on learning data. My personal preference is to let the students choose. Students will either pick the one that makes sense to them the most (learning profile) or pick the topic that intrigues them (interests). It's a win-win when students choose.

Readiness: Differentiating RAFTs based on Readiness requires the most planning, which results in worthwhile learner experiences. Sometimes students have different levels of a skill or concept. One to two prompts are crafted to match the academic level of each group of students. Having more than one prompts encourages student interests because they have choices. Prompts are assigned based on formative assessment data. The learners, individually or in groups, work at the RAFTs that will stretch them appropriately.

RAFTs is a strategy that has multiple ways to use for meeting the needs of all students, based on where they are at, and identified needs. Check out the previous articles for a full picture of supporting students through RAFTs.
Return to the beginning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
RAFTs - Engaging to Differentiating Writer's Voice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a previous series of posts I wrote about RAFTs, a powerful strategy that engages students into writing, a means to coach students to improve writing, and an approach that when differentiated helps students at varying skills to success at a respectful pace.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I first heard about Slow Writing at a #researched session delivered by David Didau, @learningspy when he talked about asking children to slow down when writing, cut the waffle and focus on every single word or sentence that they construct. I went away and read all he had written about Slow Writing on his blog where he has now helpfully grouped all the slow writing blogs.

I have used Slow Writing successfully over and over again. I have recommended it to many schools who also feedback that it has 'transformed' writing for some children.

New to slow writing?

Just start with 6 - 8 prompts. Allow no choice. This makes it a constrained piece and children have to really think about each and every sentence in the paragraph.

An example may be:

1. Your sentence must start with a verb.
2. Your sentence must contain a simile
3. Your sentence must use a relative clause.
4. Your sentence must be 3 words only.
5. Your sentence must use start with a time phrase.
6. Your sentence must use a modal verb.

Don't just copy and paste this one but think about what you want your pupils to achieve in that single paragraph. With slow writing it is about quality and not quantity. Get the children to work double spaced and then go back and edit these six sentences until 'perfect' (or as close as they can get). Once they are familiar with this concept they can choose the order or you can increase the number of prompts and allow them to choose from the list.

You can see an example of it in action here: Chaperon Rouge Blog

"But this isn't independent!" "Moderators won't like it..". You may say. However, this is not for moderators, it isn't for teacher assessment. This is to allow children to practise their skills, which hopefully they will then use in their independent writing.

Slow writing can be differentiated. You could make a number of lists dependent on ability or once children are familiar with the concept you could give them a choice of options. See diagram below.
Green: Y3 objectives.
Yellow Y4 objectives.
Orange Y5 objectives.
Purple Y6 objectives.

The children in this mixed-age/mixed-ability class were allowed to start where they wanted although the class teacher did guide some pupils as required.

As always I look forward to receiving comments.

​Rob
​

In addition to David's blog there is also an outline of Slow Writing in his book, 'The Secret of Literacy' published by Crown House and available here ​

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I first heard about Slow Writing at a #researched session delivered by David Didau, @learningspy when he talked about asking children to slow down when writing, cut the waffle and focus on every single word or sentence that they construct.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Use the visual writing prompt generator to excite and inspire your students in their writing lessons. With over 60 images to rotate through, there's a picture prompt for every classroom!

Stimulus Pictures for Writing

Randomly select one of the many pre-loaded images to get your students brains buzzing. These images are the ideal picture writing prompts for a variety of activities:

See the Whole Picture

You can choose to see these visual writing prompts with or without text. Simply launch the widget, and click "Inspire Me" to randomly select a new image. Click hide or show to reveal some suggested sentence starters.

You can also select the ℹ️ icon in the top right corner to reveal some suggested lesson prompts for each image.

Want more? Check out these fantastic resources to make the most of the Visual Writing Prompt Widget:

blog

Read about our free ULTIMATE collection of visual writing prompts and how you can use them in your classroom.

undefined

teaching resource

A See, Think, Wonder Template is useful in encouraging students to make careful observations and interpretations.

1 page Years: 1 - 6

teaching resource

A workbook to help students explore common elements of poetry.

11 pages Years: 5 - 6

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Use the visual writing prompt generator to excite and inspire your students in their writing lessons. With over 60 images to rotate through, there's a picture prompt for every classroom! Randomly select one of the many pre-loaded images to get your students brains buzzing.