Writing in Colours

 If you can afford coloured pens (and stop the rest of the department using them for colouring in), then writing in colours can be a great way to get pupils to develop their writing.

Writing in colours, writing big, or writing on unfamiliar surfaces, seems to change their approach to writing. In an exercise book, a blank page can stay blank. "I didn't know what to put." Or "I wanted to say X, but I didn't know it in French." Using coloured pens can get over the issue of the blank page, or of writing being intimidating, or writing being just for the teacher to assess.

Love the Colour Coded Key!

Here pupils are using different colours for different chunks that make up a sentence. Changing pens helps slow writing down, make It more of an enjoyable attractive experience, drawing attention to the product not just "getting it done." It also draws attention to the process. Building paragraphs from opinions, verbs that take the infinitive, infinitives, connectives. It draws attention to the building blocks and the process of assembling them. It makes writing in French more of a hands on, nuts and bolts activity. For this to work, you need to have the writing scaffold printed in colour. Or consistently use the same colours for the same components as pupils learn them.

Also for a similar stage of pupils' writing, is Ski Slope writing. Pupils draw a diagonal ski slope line from the top left to the bottom right of a double page. They write a sentence from the margin to the slope. When they have done a sentence, either they, or a very speedy teacher, can draw a skiing penguin or a ski jump, or a polar bear, or an eskimo on the slope at the end of their sentence. If that makes no sense, then have a look at the picture.

The pupil's next sentence will have to be slightly longer to reach the ski slope. And so on... And by the end of the activity, they have to have a sentence that is going to go right across the double page.

Once pupils are good at writing longer sentences, linking their ideas with and, but, so, because, especially if, for example... you can try branching tree writing. This gets them exploring different directions they can take an idea. You can do this in their books or on A3.  I like to do it on cheap rolls of backing wallpaper. The picture shows how they make sentences which extend and branch off at different points. These make for great temporary displays. Especially if your Year 11s come in and say, "We did that when we were in Year 8!" It's one of those lessons they remember, and they remember how it opened up possibilities for how you can develop an idea using the language you know.

These activities work around the boundary between randomly assembling language, curating the coherence of the language, exploring what you can do with your language, and starting to express yourself with the language. I have mentioned this in several posts, for example here in a Year 8 lesson.

This mechanical versus ephemeral boundary can still come in even at A Level. For essay planning,
where pupils need to get their ideas into shape, we use Writing on the Tables. Just doing the outline or the plan or the draft on the table changes the dynamic. It makes it freer, more experimental. It can just be at the planning stage, sketching out the shape of an essay in boxes, or starting to write it. Sometimes I operate a production line, writing the first and last line of every paragraph. And then with students moving round from one table to another, to write the next part of someone else's essay, filling in examples and arguments to fit.

Tips: Black and purple don't always wash off tables and can get on people's clothes. If you throw away a dead pen, always keep the lid - you will need it. And don't let the rest of the department use the pens for colouring in. They are much too valuable for doing writing with!