Creative writing : a resource pack for the primary classroom

Abstract

There are several ways, in which creative writing can be taught to children in the primary classroom. Tompkins (2008), outlines five creative writing teaching styles, specially designed to accompany children from the early years of primary education up to the junior years, in which writing becomes more formal and structured. We chose the guided writing teaching style as the main focus of our study and developed a five-lesson resource pack, that makes use of several writing genres for this purpose. The lessons, focused mainly on the use of structured writing planning, while embracing a creative approach. The pack was implemented in a state, Year 4 primary classroom, in which the varied resources, together with the use of several media, and the implementation of the guided writing style, presented the pupils with an enjoyable yet formative writing experience. Our results were based on the observation of the five lessons as well as teacher interviews and pupil questionnaires before and after the implementation of the pack. From the analysis of these results, we were able to identify the main success points and understand the effectiveness of our resource pack. It was clearly evident from the children's recurrent requests, their enjoyment in the use of ICT and visual media during the lessons which led to a higher degree of creativity in their writing. The children's preferences from the final questionnaire also point to their enjoyment of different writing genres and the success of group writing activities was also highlighted.