Friday Takeaways: Jill Eggleton Year 1-3 Writing Seminar

Originally posted: Nov 2, 2012

A couple of us attended a P.D session on Wednesday evening run by Jill Eggleton, author of the Key Links series by Scholastic. The brief was: "implementing small, simple steps, towards creating lifetime writers, keeping in mind the keys to a child's progress." She wrapped up with this quote, which summed up her key point nicely -  a point which we as teachers need to always keep in mind, and one which we would do well to pass on to our students:

“Write drunk; edit sober.” - Ernest Hemingway
Woah, let me re-check my notes! Ahah! Here is the right one:

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.” - Truman Capote
Writing shouldn't be a mundane task, out-of-context, and painful to get through. It should be a passionate, thoughtful experience; a playful and rich process. This starts from you. Be wide-eyed and enthusiastic when reading children's work. Model the joy in reading and writing.



Here are a couple of takeaways from the course, tl:dr ("too long, didn't read") style:

• The key to writing is oral language - if they can't talk about something, they probably can't write about it.
• For teachers - be writers yourselves. Know what it means to get from the head to the page. Start a journal, record interesting personal experiences and characters. You don't have to always read stories to children - tell stories too!
• Provide opportunities to write daily. Practise is the best 'instruction' of all.
• For youngins: write from personal, common experiences. Don't introduce text-types too early. When you do though, make it purposeful: "I want to tell you a personal story, so we're going to use personal narrative."
• Emphasise "putting a magnifying glass" over certain experiences (don't waffle on about the whole holiday for example, stick to your most memorable moment).
• Great writers don't tell the whole story - encourage the children to "show don't tell".
• Read poetry every day. It encourages children to be more playful and descriptive with their own writing.
• When giving feedback / reading a child's piece for the first time: make sure they know their message has been communicated (use a statement, not a question and do so using their own language). Then strengths, then next steps.
• Don't have them write too much! They can't be bothered going back and re-crafting / editing. Quality over quantity. They can write long meandering rambles at home if they want to.
• So these were the meaty chunks I was able to extract from the casserole of information at the session. Some of them may be common sense, but to a newb like me, I need to make a conscious effort to keep these in mind. 

Thanks Jill.

P.S:

Maybe I'm spoilt by attending Ignition 2012 and a few Ignite evenings, but jeepers creepers, we really need to change traditional teacher P.D. Sitting for 3 hours passively listening to a tumult of information in a hot fidgety theatre can be draining and just plain hard work. Mix things up, get us talking, be creative... practise what you preach!