The image of a starving author struggling to produce a masterpiece is a popular perception of what it means to write.
In primary schools, the ability to write is often viewed through the lens of producing stories and other forms of creative writing.
Perhaps this reflects the assumption that writing is always an individual, solitary act demanding dedication and perseverance.
It is certainly true that writing requires perseverance.
It is a complex task demanding the coordination of thoughts and ideas expressed in cohesive, grammatically functional prose, following the conventions of written communication and recorded in a legible script.
Given all of this, even the most skillful writers understand the importance of motivation.
So, what might help to build a classroom climate that fosters pupils’ motivation to write?
Writing motivation: what works?
A recent paper by Debra Myhill, Teresa Cremin and Lucy Oliver, reporting on a series of focus groups with pupils aged between 7 and 14 that were conducted as part of the larger Teachers As Writers study, provides new insight into what can help - and, more importantly, into what doesn’t help.
Data collected during the 32 focus groups revealed a range of common classroom practices that pupils felt were helpful, including teacher scaffolding and modelling of writing, the use of exemplar materials and reference resources, and one-to-one support when they get stuck.
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Teacher feedback and target setting were also viewed as supportive, in contrast to peer feedback, which was often insufficiently critical to be useful.
However, pupils said they appreciated having the opportunity to share ideas with the class while working together to write.
Freewriting - the practice of writing ideas down without the pressures of considering punctuation or spelling - was considered to improve the confidence of fledgling writers.
There was some suggestion that this eased the problems of starting writing when faced with a blank page.
For some, freewriting appeared to reduce the cognitive load of attending simultaneously to composition and accurate transcription.
What detracts from enjoyment of writing?
Perhaps the most powerful findings from this study are the comparatively few comments pupils made about what they felt did not help them to learn to write or enjoy being writers.
Highly scaffolded approaches and prescriptive tasks (for example, prescribed planning), using sentence starters and paragraph starters, were felt to be overly restrictive. Report writing and essays, which were associated with rules and constraints, such as having to use “PEE” (point, evidence, example) paragraphs were mentioned as detracting from the enjoyment of writing and were consequently seen as demotivating.
Ultimately, then, it seems there is a tension between some common strategies used to help teach the nuts and bolts of the writing process and pupils’ desire to develop their own writerly voices as they communicate through text.
How can teachers resolve that tension? Perhaps the answer lies in simply recognising that writing is not just an individual, solitary act of endurance but is also about community and conversation - and it’s a conversation that pupils want to take part in.
Megan Dixon is a doctoral student and associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University
