Analysing a text - Writing and art workshop Week 3

Text analysis is key to helping less confident writers build a framework to hang their ideas on. It is the solid foundation that supports the imaginative flourishes of a quality finished piece.

A good author is a good reader!

Week 3

"I love books. I love that moment when you open one and sink into it, you can escape from the world into a story that's way more interesting than yours will ever be."

Elizabeth Scott

Do we at ARTiculate have a catchy slogan? If we did, it would probably be the best slogan in the world. But, if I was going to adopt one here and now it might be: "Read. Then go for it!" The importance of reading for an author is difficult to overstate. How can you write convincingly if you've never read a convincing book? Drawing on other people's ideas, being inspired by another's use of language, seeing how a text is structured - all essentials for a budding writer.

When you're working on a short, picture book text where words are effectively sparse, writing your own level-appropriate text as a model for children to be guided by is a really good idea.

And so today, my young trainee authors analysed a model text written by me to use as a model for their own writing. The piece was a written from the viewpoint of The Man: his 'message in a bottle' after his initial encounter with the island and its conflicted inhabitants.

After a quick read through, the group were asked to:
a) summarise the content of each paragraph, making notes to the side of the page. This will then form the structure for their own writing.
b) comb through the text looking for adjectives, adverbs, connectives and other nuts and bolts of a well written text. These were colour-coded.
c) look at how the author engages the reader directly.

This process of text analysis is key to helping less confident writers build a framework to hang their ideas on. Although this might lack the pizzazz to get you an outstanding in an observation (I did not stand on a table during this session. I was tempted, I admit.), it is the solid foundation that supports the imaginative flourishes of a quality finished piece. Moreover, it is the reality of writing for an audience - a key part of an author's work.

After reading the first parts of their initial drafts, this approach is working a treat!

Progression in primary drama - going beyond the National Curriculum

Drama is an integral component of primary English teaching. It is the engine that drives creative responses to stories, helping children explore characters, settings and predicaments. Yet the primary National Curriculum for England (DfE, 2013) makes scant reference to drama. Some generic guidance indicates the importance of speaking, listening and performing although these points are both too obvious and too generalised to be useful to teachers and subject coordinators hoping to embed drama across the whole school. When writing our forthcoming book, Teaching Shakespeare in Primary Schools: All the World's a Stage (Routledge, David Fulton, 2021), both Maureen and I felt that whole-school drama guidance for primary teachers - so integral to teaching Shakespeare's plays - was notably lacking from online resources currently available (apologies if you have produced such a document but we could not find it!). We decided to compile our own. In fact, you may have found this blog post...

Filthy wretch or poor thing? Rethinking the Island, KS2, Week 1

A treat for the final half term - a new workshop at a delightful school in Leeds! This half term I am working with two Year 5 teachers to develop a cross-year group, cross-curricular writing project based on my favourite picture book, Armin Greder's The Island . I've done this book many times and every time the response is different! This week, we got to grips with the facts, possibilities and mysteries of the story. What do we know about the story so far? (we only ever read up to page 6 to leave it on a knife edge...) What doesn't this story tell us and what could we infer or predict? We looked at the crowd of islanders who 'welcome' the stranger's arrival. As in every class, country or community, no group ever sees the world the same way and we discussed how the islanders might react differently to the man. Is he a poor thing who needs to be rescued? Is he a curiosity? Is he a threat? We each adopted an islander and took on their perspective f...

Computer games and 'deep play'

“Computer games are not a waste of time. They help me think strategically.” That is the best excuse I could come up with when my wife asked me whether I had spent the day wisely playing the strategy game Rome: Total War all afternoon, rather than tackling the pile of assignments I had to mark. In a way, this is true. I don’t run a business or manage other employees. I work alone, usually teaching online, managing my own workload and switching between a variety of self-generated creative projects. So, growing a city, managing an army, designing a profitable dinosaur amusement park: these activities demand a different kind of mental engagement than my usual work. And, yes, gaming is also fun and, as a career in professional football management is unlikely at this stage in my life, it offers a simulated experience for things I am probably not cut out for (although, at 39, I still feel I have a season or two in me as a non-league reserve goalkeeper). Classic city bulding game, The S...

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