Lighting the Literacy Fire - Jill Eggleton

Recently Kirsty and I attended a workshop by Jill Eggleton called Lighting the Literacy Fire with a focus on writing. This workshop was aimed more at junior school writing. However, its ideas and strategies could be used across the school. 

There were 3 main ideas which we took from the evening. 

Purposeful

Writing needs to be purposeful. There needs to be an authentic context and the children need to see the reason behind their writing. Without this, children who are reluctant writers will see no need to record their ideas. With this in mind Jill Eggleton was an advocate for not using genre based writing instruction in the junior school, but allowing experiences, oral language and integrated writing activities to form the basis of your writing programme. 

Metalanguage of writing

Becoming familiar with and using the metalanguage of writing with the children, so that they can see what good writers do e.g. topic, audience, purpose, figurative language elements, adding detail, punctuation, organisation etc. This allows children to critically think about their writing and provides a framework for giving feedback. We are doing this really well and our unpacking of the literacy progressions last year has helped to share this with the children in ways they can understand. 

Jill Eggleton also talked a lot about quality not quantity. Children often think that the more they have written the better their story is. We need to teach children to recraft their writing. To be selective with what words to use. Use strong nouns, verbs and adjectives and to be specific! If children have written pages and pages they will never get to the recrafting stage. 

Organisation

Few ideas about organisation of writing

• Publish regularly - once a week for junior writer and at least 1 in every 8 for middle to senior writers. 
• First feedback comment to children should be a positive response to the message in story.

Alice & Kirsty