Creative Writing Helps Children to Engage, According to Research
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Charles Dickens’ opens his novel Hard Times with headteacher Mr Gradgrind demanding facts not fancy from his pupils.
But it is the ‘fancy’ that allows children to engage more in the classroom, according to research at the University of Worcester.
Dr Robyn Cox and Julie MacLusky visited schools that were trying out some of the creative writing exercises from their new book, Teaching Creative Writing in the Primary School: Delight, Entice, Inspire.
They found that the exercises enabled schoolchildren to feel that they had more freedom in their writing and that this led to greater engagement and concentration. The researchers noted that at times pupils demonstrated a rarely achieved 100% engagement in the writing lesson.
Julie MacLusky, Senior Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing and Course Leader in English Language at the University, said: “It was shocking to hear some 11-year-olds saying they had never written a story before.
“The National Literacy Strategy, together with a largely outcomes-based curriculum model in UK primary schools, has resulted in some schools teaching writing lessons which are mechanistic.
“The exercises in the book allow them to be much more creative and free. With a focus on meaning and story structure rather than grammatical elements like conjunctives or connectives, children are able to engage the reader through emotional responses.”
The book aims to support and develop writing skills in primary schools by giving teachers ideas to inject creativity in their lessons whilst motivating their pupils to be more creative.
“The future of the country is in creative industries and it’s something that has been neglected by past governments,” Julie MacLusky said. “However, we think we have the solution. We believe our exercises will enable teachers to both bring creativity back into the writing classroom and engage those hard to reach pupils.”
The book also features writing exercises and templates that can be used by students to progress and develop their own skills and offers tips on how to write characters and plots and how to conduct research for fiction successfully.
The book, published by the Open University, is now available.
page as a PDF
