Big Writing

I spent the day yesterday in a cinema in Covent Garden with a load of primary school teachers and Ros Wilson, the author of the Big Writing philosophy that is sweeping through education. Born from her experiences with some of the most deprived children in the country, Big Writing is about learning to talk about things before you can write them down. She says that for the 20% of us who went to university, grew up in homes where people talk around the dinner table and explore what we think by listening to our elders discuss any number of subjects, we'll have about 30,000 words at our disposal. For those at the other end of the scale, it's more like 12,000 by the time they leave school.

Trying then to get students with limited vocabulary to write what they think, let alone to put in a semi-colon to show that they're only half way through the thought is going to be a bit of a battle. Better to get them to talk about their ideas, using peer groups to raise the game, praising them all the way, and if we can use the WOW word lists that Ros uses with her primary school kids, all the better. Big Words = Big Thought = Big Writing.

But Ros doesn't ignore the punctuation debate. Far from it; she believes that if you tell people who are naturally designed to please their elders that a full stop is a level 1 while using a combination of - . ?, ... ! ' " ": ; and a () is a level 5, who really is going to opt for the lower level?  

But wanting it is not enough. Ros believes that 'patterning', the embedding of ideas by reinforcing what they've learnt over and over and over and over again is essential. Particularly at primary level. Make it visual, she says and crouches into the now famous Kung Fu pose that we saw on 'The Unteachables'. She shouts a question and then: Pow! Pow! Pow! and signs a question mark. She shouts an exclamation. Pow! Pow! Pow! she chops with her hands and then signs an exclamation mark. This is 'patterning'. Making them laugh. Understanding that the kids who jiggle their legs or tap their teeth with their pencils are kinaesthetic learners and this Kung Fu Punctuation is getting directly to the part of their brains that no-one's ever bothered with before.

Ros likes my idea of The Write Rhythm. It's been touched upon in nursery education already with little children using their whole bodies to make shapes of the letters they're learning for the first time. But this is new, and as I head home, my head is buzzing with ideas.

Eating, Shooting and Leaving with Lynne Truss

You can't really do a project on punctuation without a chat with Lynne Truss now, can you? And she lives in Brighton, so I thought I'd invite her for a cup of tea at the local museum.  Ok, so we talked more about dogs and mutual friends than semi-colons, but as she quickly told me, she 's not really an expert in this field at all, just a phenomenally successful  writer on the subject who was at the right place at the right time!

So we talked about writing and rhythm and about hearing the words we write as they pop onto the screen and knowing when something doesn't sound right. We were read to as children of course, and we've heard good writing since we were tiny.

We traded opinions about how young people have become fluent in another language; text speak has become evidence of how fast the young brain learns, and although it may make the young sloppy about their punctuation, it doesn't mean that they're thick. Far from it.

But the extended use of textspeak beyond the mobile phone itself means that the first written language has become the one without the punctuation. So, while people of Lynne's and my generation think punctuation as naturally as we breathe when we read out loud, so the speedy thumbs pour out their messages without time to pause for breath let alone a comma. When it's then applied to Facebook, notes passed under desks and birthday cards, when exactly is it the right time to use 'proper' English? Even those who, like the school kids I filmed a few weeks ago, are perfectly on top of their punctuation, won't find a place for a semi-colon on a Facebook status update.

But does that mean that no-one will write like Lynne does in 20 years time? Will language become something that flows from their finger tips, something to savour with words that melt in your mouth?  Time to talk to Ros 'Big Wilson' Writing whose goal is to make sure that they do.

The Super-Teachers: 1. Phil Beadle

And then I found myself in a cyberworld of Super-Teachers and Big Ideas (and lots of Capital Letters) which I pulled into emails to try to make them land so I could look at them more closely. And they did; Phil Beadle, Ros Wilson and Lynne Truss and I are all best friends now. Phil, the only one who I haven't actually met yet, even sent me an unedited Word document of his soon-to-be-book, The Little Book of Ideas which opens with a quote by Steve Albini, “Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.”

Falling instantly in love with the man who would then write, 'If we consider the Gaudi Cathedral in Barcelona, for instance, and wonder what might be the most appropriate way to investigate it? In any sane world, surely, performing a dance about it must be one of the most sensible ways of going about such an investigation', I checked him out on Youtube. And I found the glorious http://www.teachers.tv/ with programmes made by my very own chum from GLR days, Peter Curran. Who, rather handily now lives just up the road.

As my paths crossed ever more jauntily, I felt that I had finally found where I'm heading with this project. Dance was the launchpad and may be the final frontier in a new way of teaching, but for now, it was rhythm that was the key. I'd even subconsciously answered my own question in the original title, The Write Rhythm.

Phil's inspired teaching of The Blessing on Teachers TV uses movement and rhythm to get right under the very meaning of the poem and to 'embed', as those super-teachers say, the understanding for the students. I've got more to do with Phil, but I've got to go to the Ballet Rambert next. Its use of signing to help the hard of hearing understand what's going on in the dance is, I reckon, going to be another link in the chain that will lead me to the answer...

Storytelling

After the nice secondary school in East Sussex, I realised that I'd missed the point. While there were certainly new areas to explore because of what I'd learnt there, this whole journey began with my own students at Hastings. Rather than choose to take my already rationed camera crew to anywhere new, I'd take them home.

So, as my current students piled in for my Monday lecture, they found my former students, now grown up 2nd years and clearly confident with the tools of the trade that my lot had only just discovered. As the cameras rolled, I asked them to punctuate a piece from Stephanie Meyer's The Host that I had handed out without any punctuation, and which I was now reading with extra pauses for end of paragraphs and clear rhythm. Most made mistakes such as using commas instead of full stops - the most common error I find in their essays.

It occurred to me that this was a new phenomenon for many of them. I asked them how many had been read to as a child. Of the 25 or so in the class, five put their hands up.
I made a mental note to explore the Steiner principle of oral storytelling until the age of seven and to examine whether children who have enjoyed hearing the natural rhythm of language used to its best effect before they even open their first school book can punctuate. And to read to them in class.

And then I showed them Michael Jackson doing what inspired me in the first place. They indulged me and they talked about it for the camera, but the link between the rhythm of dance and the rhythm of language still isn't there. That's ok; I'll come back to Jackson. I've got some other people to see first...