Developing Creative Writing in the Foundation Phase

Understand the different purposes and function of written language as a means of:

-remembering

-organising

-developing ideas and information and as a source of enjoyment

Communicate by:

• experimenting with mark-making

• producing pieces of emergent writing

• beginning to write in a conventional way

• writing with increasing confidence, fluency and accuracy, making choices about vocabulary

• Children’s writing should be encouraged and enriched by opportunities throughout the learning environment both indoors and outdoors, supported by props and dressing –up clothes.

• This allows children, through their child-initiated play, to recreate or extemporise around the stories they have experienced.

• This in turn, provides an opportunity to cultivate confident storytellers and early story writers (Talk for Writing)

Range

stories

poems

diaries

notes

lists

captions

records

messages, notices, invitations, instructions

Why Stories?

Narrative is a primary act of mind

‘we dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip, learn, hate, and love by narrative’ (Hardy)

Storytelling into Writing

• Storytelling is a natural human activity

• Story writing is a complex activity requiring children to internalise language patterns

• The storymaking process begins with loitering with the text

• ‘talking the text type’

Imagination

• ‘the issue is not so much a lack of the ability to imagine- but rather a lack of the building blocks with which to imagine’ ( Pie Corbett)

• building a storehouse of stories inside the mind lies at the heart of storymaking

• hearing and telling stories is the most powerful way of acquiring language

‘Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.’

(Britton, 1993)

‘Language is the dress of thought.’

(Samuel Johnson

1709-1784)

3 Key skills to Story making

• Imitation

• Innovation

• Invention

7 steps to teaching a new form

• Familiarisation

• Discovery/ problem solve

• Model

• Share

• Guided

• Independent construction

• Present to audience

‘What warmth! What heat! It made Gatty stretch each limb, like a cat. Before long it made her yawn and yawn again. It seemed to make her stronger and weaker, both at the same time.

I’m as clean as a cat’s tongue,’ she carolled.

‘No, as clean as a conker. You know, when it’s just split out of its mucky old shell.’

Feed Me!

• Feeding the imagination- how?

• Words, words and more words, the role of poetry and the storyteller

Read to me!

• weaving the magic

• learning the craft of writing

• a rich vein of reading, poetry and rhyme, drama and play plus interactive talk are all essential

Linking Sounds and Letters

Systematic phonics provide children with the skills and knowledge that enable them to write phonemically plausible attempts at anything they can verbalise.

This gives the children confidence to apply talk for writing in the creation of simple captions and sentences, either by writing or manipulating plastic/ magnetic letters

Schools which have stories at their heart

• At the heart of every culture lies song, dance, art religion…and stories

• Without the arts, we have no heart, no culture and our schooling becomes dry dust upon the wind (Pie Corbett)