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.