‘Tales of the Toenail Fairy’ – And Other Stories Of Writing For Pleasure
Letting children delve deep into their interests is a great first step in encouraging them to write for pleasure, says James Clements – no matter how bizarre the results may be…
It all began one Monday morning when Sophie told her story to the class. Her gran had bought her a new pad of paper and a sparkly pencil on a visit to the Natural History Museum, so Sophie had sat down and used them to write a tale about a dinosaur skeleton that came to life.
A cancelled assembly meant there was time for her to share it with the rest of the children, so we popped it under the visualiser and admired her illustrations while Sophie read her work aloud. I don’t know if it was the exciting narrative structure she had employed (a series of vicious dinosaur attacks linked by ‘and then’) or simply the sheer level of gore described in such meticulous detail, but the story struck a chord with 4C.
When Sophie finished, she was met with spontaneous applause from the rest of the class. Glowing with pride, she went back to her seat. Over the next week, Sophie wrote three more stories that she read to her friends at breaktime. By Friday, six children from 4C had brought in stories they’d written at home. By the following Monday, we were up to 11. Of course, the pieces varied in quality – but what was important was that children had wanted to create them. Nothing had been written because someone told them to do it – these children were writing for pleasure. Most primary schools pay attention to reading for pleasure, and teachers are increasingly aware of the impact it can have on academic achievement. But the idea of writing for pleasure seems to have a much lower profile, which is a shame – because making time for children to write about what they want can support the development of key concepts that help them to become keen and confident writers.
Pen pals
Firstly, it helps children to see themselves as writers, rather than as ‘people who do some writing when they’re told’. This shift in mindset can be incredibly helpful when asking them to follow a writing process that involves making changes to improve their work.
Writing for pleasure also helps children to see writing as a form of communication – that the key to good writing isn’t necessarily meeting a set of success criteria, or adhering to the demands of a specific genre. Instead, it’s about being able to communicate with a reader, to share your ideas lucidly or to use language to persuade, explain or delight.
It can also help children to actually enjoy sitting down to write, and as with everything else, it’s much easier to teach when working with willing participants. Finally, children’s own work gives us a medium through which to teach the art of writing. On a simple level, if children have got a piece of writing in front of them that they’re pleased with and found interesting to create, they’re much more likely to act on advice about how to improve it or correct any errors.
The investment they have in that piece is likely to motivate them to make it the best that they can produce. And it’s through making these changes that children learn to write well for a particular audience and purpose. By the end of the term, two thirds of 4C had written something at home – stories, comic strips, non-fiction texts about mysterious deep-sea creatures, and the ongoing adventures of the ‘Toenail Fairy’ (like the tooth fairy, but…well, I’m sure you can guess).
For those that still weren’t keen to become authors in their precious evening time, we made space in our busy school week for everyone to work on their own independent writing project. This yielded an A-Z of sports cars, a series of wrestling match reports and a reboot of The Lord of the Rings set in space. Every piece was shared and celebrated somehow, every child given an opportunity to be a writer presenting his or her work to an audience.
A short sentence
Of course, in addition to 4C’s time spent writing for pleasure, the normal business of teaching children to write continued – English lessons full of shared and guided writing; the chance to look at texts to identify how great authors and storytellers use language for effect; the opportunity to write, receive feedback and then edit or redraft in the light of that feedback; and focused grammar and punctuation teaching.
Occasionally, the two would link in the most wonderful way. “You know that thing we were doing in English on Tuesday where we were changing the sentence length and using those little punchy sentences? Well, I’ve done that in my story at home.”
Yes! That’s all I want to hear as a teacher – children actually using the things they’ve been taught in class in their independent work. Of course, time spent writing for pleasure could be seen as a luxury in a curriculum (and an assessment system) that seems to value accurate use of grammar and punctuation above all else.
I would argue that as teachers we have a duty to look beyond the obsessions of the day to what truly matters – supporting children to become confident, competent writers, who can control language to communicate exactly what they want to say, giving them a voice that others will listen to and respect. Having a core group of children in the class who want to write, and who see themselves as writers, makes doing that so much easier. 4C’s enthusiasm for writing continued uninterrupted until one day Mikel put his hand up: “Mr Clements, I haven’t written a story, but I’ve got one I can just tell everyone. My uncle told it to me”. What followed next was a three-minute rollercoaster ride of a spine-tingling ghost story. And so the next craze began.
Three ways to encourage writing for pleasure…
1 | Don’t dictate the subject
This can be tricky as it means you’ll get plenty of writing filled with zombies, characters from children’s TV, magical sparkle horses and lots of name-checks for children’s friends in the class. Try to remember that the purpose here isn’t to produce writing that is interesting for adults (although hopefully it will contribute to that in the long run) – it’s about creating an enthusiasm for writing that we can harness and put to use elsewhere, and about children seeing themselves as a writer with their own unique voice.
2 | Think carefully about writing at home
While this can be great, as it helps children to practise writing, it’s important to think about equity. Some children will have the inclination to write at home, some won’t. Some will have support from parents, some won’t. Others will lack the resources (even a paper and pencil) or a quiet place to sit and work. If writing can’t or won’t happen at home, space for it to happen needs to be found in school so that no one is disadvantaged.
3 | Share a prompt
Whenever you give children carte blanche to write about absolutely anything they like, there will always be at least one: “I don’t know what to write”. Providing an optional prompt – a picture, a film clip, an artefact, a title or an idea – is absolutely fine. Better still is a choice of starting points with the freedom to deviate from their chosen option if a good idea comes along.
James Clements is an English adviser and the creator of shakespeareandmore.com; you can follow him at @James_ShMore.
