Abstract
As political agendas change, the teaching of writing continues to evolve, encompassing different writing practices in an attempt to address the perceived needs for literacy in our society. This article presents the Write Here project, which aims to boost children’s social development and literacy attainment through engagement with visual art, play, and multimodal learning, delivered in both art gallery and classroom settings. The valuable knowledge gained at the end of this study was evaluated and developed further through a series of extended collaborations between professional, postgraduate and undergraduate writers, and schoolchildren and their teachers. Our findings suggest that engaging young learners with creative, playful, multimodal activities will foster their confidence and motivation to engage with the subject and, more importantly, will lead to a significant improvement in literacy attainment.
Highlights
Our main goals included (a) testing how visual art, play, and multimodal learning can help engage children with purposeful, meaningful creative writing practices; (b) capitalizing on this motivation to support the acquisition of practical “nuts and bolts” writing skills; and (c) promoting the engagement of young people with art galleries
One refugee with little English later wrote, I thought it was brilliant . . . and when we look at the stories I felt that I was scared because if I was in that time, I might be dead because of the war that killed their father . . . their story was important because it was true . . . because I’ve seen lots in my life, because I have lots of things like war and I want to learn more about them
The findings of the Write Here project are presented here in the context of previous data on pupils’ attainment in writing, and based on a new dataset created as part of this research
Summary
Many are hampered in their ability to write them down The reasons for this may include lack of confidence or practical skills, having English as a second language, learning disabilities, or cultural deficits. This difficulty in communicating through written forms affects both the children’s social development and their academic attainment, with serious consequences for prospects in adult life. The Write Here collaborative project was designed to address the challenges children face as writers. It drew from Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert dramatic enquiry teaching approach to allow a certain degree of learner flexibility and creativity in exploring the process of writing, as opposed to learning about different writing styles. The project involved a professional writer working in residency in both an art gallery and in schools, collaborating with a gallery education officer and a lead schoolteacher, to develop a sustainable body of practice designed to support young people’s confidence and skill in writing
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