Frank, Jack, Leo and Ollie are just four of the boys involved in a six-month project designed to encourage them to write. From observations of them (see page 23), we can see that they are having fun, they are being playful and creative, they are all totally absorbed in their play, they are resourceful, and they are all drawing on their knowledge of the world and of stories that they have heard and love, to enhance their play. They all have the potential to be powerful learners - they are all powerful learners! But they aren't extraordinary children, except inasmuch as all children are extraordinary, and they all go to schools or pre-schools in areas identified as having 'disadvantaged' children.
The observations took place in schools and settings that took part in two Boys' Writing projects, one in Gloucestershire and one in Oxfordshire. The aim of the projects was to raise the attainment of boys in writing, as measured by Early Years Foundation Stage Profile scores. Many of the boys in the project schools were scoring below the Early Learning Goals for writing, and they were scoring significantly lower than the girls.
A total of 20 schools and their linked pre-schools or nurseries took part in each of the two projects, which both lasted six months. The schools included city schools, schools in small villages and schools on estates in small towns. The success, measured by EYFSP scores, was substantial. The percentage of boys attaining 6 or more in the EYFSP strand of writing rose from 17 per cent to 77 per cent in one school, from 14 per cent to 65 per cent in another school, and these results were replicated in other schools. The success in terms of boys' confidence and motivation to write was also highly significant, and was recognised by practitioners and parents.
Practitioners' comments during the project included:
'All of a sudden you've got everyone writing, they're all writing.'
'Phonics has grown and grown, you see it emerge in their free play and you think, hey, it's working!'
'Harry is great now! He draws lots of characters and writes lots of names. There's been a huge change - he definitely wasn't writing, wasn't drawing. It's made him feel more capable.'
The project was built around three sets of questions which practitioners had to ask themselves.
1. How do boys develop and learn - in general and individually? Are there any differences in the ways that boys and girls learn?
Practitioners began the project by observing the boys in general, and two case study boys in more depth, to identify their skills, interests, learning styles and dispositions to learning - both positive and negative. They related their observations to current knowledge about brain development and boys' physical, cognitive and social and emotional development. (This is covered in an accessible way in books such as Steve Biddulph's Raising Boys, Sue Palmer's 21st Century Boys, Simon Baron-Cohen's The Essential Difference and Sally Featherstone and Ros Bayley's Boys and Girls Come Out to Play.)
At the beginning of the project, the practitioners (all women) tended to see boys as less capable learners than girls, with fewer of the skills and dispositions that help with school learning. The boys didn't want to sit down and write. If they were persuaded to come to a formal activity, they tended to rush their work so that they could go and play. They struggled with the physical skills of letter formation, as well as finding it harder than girls to learn letter sounds. They lacked the motivation and the confidence to write.
Instead, they chose physical play, often running around outside. They spent time playing with construction, small-world and computers and role playing real-life situations. Their play scenarios involved magic, pets, dinosaurs, play fighting and superheroes.
However, when practitioners focused their attention on the learning styles and interests of the boys by observing them in their play, they appreciated that the boys did, in fact, display many qualities of effective learners.
- - The boys loved a challenge, as long as it was real and made sense to them.
Ben: 'I'm making a book. This is how I make books. I can write anything I like. I can make a monster book.'
- - They displayed great imagination and creativity.
Sam is playing in the sandpit in his pre-school alongside a group of boys. 'Digging for treasure, are we?' Zak: 'No, we're making dangerous stuff.' Sam: 'Are we making concrete to get bad guys?' Zak: 'Yes, that's why we need dangerous stuff to get concrete.' Sam: 'Zak, watch me, we're making dangerous stuff to kill bad guys. Wooooooooo, I fell over. Zak, dig with me and put it in my pile.' Zak: 'No.' Sam: 'We're making a volcano.' Mohammed: 'No.' Sam: 'I am, I am.' He filled Mohammed's hole. Sam: 'Are you making a workshop?' Mohammed: 'No, I'm digging a hole.' Sam: 'Me too.'
- - They were very interested in how things work, and loved taking things apart and building things.
Connor spends a long time making 'a pair of swim protect engine swim slide mud binoculars, with paddles to help the binoculars go in water and material to protect the engine' from cardboard tubes, string and material.
- - They were able to work collaboratively if they were given time, space and plenty of resources.
Ethan and Ikram are drawing on a long piece of paper on the floor. Ethan is very interested in cars and other vehicles, Ikram is fascinated by dinosaurs. Together, they create a dinosaur car park, using books for inspiration.
- - They were proud of their achievements.
Jack: 'Who wants this picture?' George: 'Me!'Jack holds his drawing high above his head: 'Someone who's been really good today.'
- - And of course, they loved a bit of mischief and toilet humour.
Ethan was bashing out letters on the computer randomly, with Josh, having a lovely time! 'It says: poo poo, poo poo, poo poo. It's for our friends. It's a poo poo message.'
2. How do children learn to write? What are the skills, knowledge and understanding that children need to become writers?
- - Children need to have something to say before they can start to write. Observations showed that the boys' language in their self-chosen play was more complex and advanced than in adult-led activities, and so their play was the best starting point for writing:
Alex is in his reception class garden with Lucas. They both have a car. Alex: 'Get the speed camera on your car, Lucas. You press this button and then you spy how fast people goes.' He starts to drive off. 'That's how we do it. No one spies on us, 'cos we spy on them.'
- - Then children need to understand that writing is a way of recording speech in a symbolic form, so that they can communicate their message to other people when they aren't there. As practitioners 'tuned in' to the boys, they became better at providing resources and opportunities for them to mark-make and write in play contexts that had real meaning for the boys. The practitioners scribed for the children, providing models of writers, and encouraged independent writing and markmaking.
Harry, aged three years, is in the garden of his pre-school, making a model with wooden blocks. Joe comes out with a pad and pencil. 'I'm checking we've got everything we need. I'm just checking we got all the things we need to make a big tower. We need pixes and mixes and willins and billins. You got all the stuff you need, Harry, you can stop working now.'
- - Once children have understood the connection between symbols and speech, they have to master the symbolic system that we use in English. There was more incentive for boys to persist in learning the alphabet when they could write something that interested them in their play. Practitioners gave children encouragement and support with phonic skills and letter formation when appropriate.
Charlie sits at a table in his reception class. 'I'm going to draw Ben, he's got green eyes actually. He can change into anyone. He's got pockets in his legs. The big Ben can't roll, he can jump.' An adult encourages Charlie to try to write Ben. 'It's a capital B and I can only write a "e" and I'm practising writing a nnnnnn and a mmmmmmmm.' He then writes Bem.
- - When children can understand and use the symbolic system that we know as the alphabet, they have to give and take meaning from writing.
Henry is in the home corner in his reception class with a group of boys. 'It's nearly bonfire night! We're pretending. It's a time when we can go to bonfire night! Get in our car, quickly!' (car noises ...) Kieran is holding a diary and looking carefully at a Tube map: 'We didn't know where bonfire night was going to be.'
- - Last, but not least, children need to have the perceptual ability to recognise and form individual letter shapes that are quite similar to each other, and the physical ability to form these shapes on paper, using small writing tools. This can be quite problematic and stressful for many four-year-olds. Practitioners encouraged independent writing, but also scribed at times, to enable children to express in writing more than they were able to write themselves - showing that they valued the transcriptional skills of writing (recording on paper) and the compositional aspects (creating a message).
George is at a writing activity with his teacher: 'I'm writing "mouse is walking".' He writes m. His teacher asks: 'Can you hear any other sounds?' George: 'Ou.' He finds the sound 'ou' written on a sound card, and copies it. 'I'm tired. I didn't get much sleep.'
- - One case study boy was described at the start as 'an unguided missile'. At the end of the project his teacher said, 'He's starting to do it - but it's on his own terms.' This was a very typical comment, and so practitioners began to think about how they could provide planned and spontaneous opportunities for writing that enabled the boys to write 'on their own terms' - in their self-chosen play, and linked to their interests.
3. How can we improve our learning environment and teaching - using our knowledge of how boys develop and learn to help them to develop their writing skills?
When the practitioners related their observations to their understanding of how boys develop and learn, they understood why boys needed to be running around and on the move. They started to plan with the boys, taking their interests as starting points.
They developed the learning environment, adding mark-making resources to different areas of the indoor and outdoor classrooms. They discovered that learning doesn't have to be done at tables - for boys, it often happens outside, in dens, in bushes, in mud; it happens sprawled out on the floor; it happens on the move.
Issues that had been problematic for practitioners - noise, behaviour, control, the boys' perceived inability to sit still and concentrate - disappeared or became manageable. As teachers got to know the boys better, they became less fearful of them, and were able to enjoy and harness their less compliant but often very competent learning abilities. 'It's good to have a fresh pair of eyes and a little bit of knowledge about boys' brains, boys' hormones,' said one practitioner.
FINAL WORDS
The projects were successful because they freed early years practitioners from perceived constraints around 'preparing children for school' and getting children ready for formal education. They got to know their children better, and learned a lot about how all children develop and learn, and more about how children learn to write. They were able to respond creatively to children's interests and needs, plan some exciting and imaginative open-ended activities, and engage with children's play in a more genuine way.
Commenting on the project, one practitioner said: 'I've taken a step back, and am scaffolding their learning. One thing leads to another ... you observe, find out what children really know, and build it into your planning.' Another concluded: 'It's us. We've changed our attitude, and it's made a big difference to the children.'
Julie Cigman is an early years consultant. For more information about the Boys' Writing Projects, please contact: Julie Cigman jcigman@hotmail.co.uk
IMAGINATIVE IDEAS
Imaginative ideas that stimulated writing in play included:
Pirate role play outside encouraged team work, sharing of ideas and writing for a purpose - 'We need to make a map or we won't know where the treasure is.'
Explorers' packs and writers' tool kits in lunch boxes and rucksacks and writing frames in role play areas stimulated writing for a purpose that had meaning for children - for example, creating a menu, when he went to 'the pizza eating place'.
A chalkboard in the home corner encouraged writing for a purpose, pride and motivation - 'They could read what I wrote!'
Topic planning with the children developed listening skills, motivation and sharing of ideas. One child wanted to find out 'what people eat before they do their jobs, like in the winter Olympics they eat spaghetti'. Another child wanted to find out about chips. 'To make chips you need sausages.' A third child said chips were made from potatoes: 'It is potatoes, 'cos I've seen it on the TV.' She was backed up by another child: 'I helped my mummy do it (make chips).'
A writing trolley outside provoked a flurry of writing, and encouraged children to apply their phonic knowledge in their play.
Home-made books with drawings and photographs were real and relevant, so they motivated children. Some children made diaries in the holiday and enjoyed sharing them with the class; others read their stories to the class, generating further interest.
A large roll of paper on the floor, on tables, inside and outside As an open ended activity, it promoted lots of language and encouraged sharing of ideas and collaborative work. Boys tend to use their drawings in their play: 'Look, it's my road!'
'You can draw a roof on my house. I can't do roofs.'
Large pieces of paper and coloured pens on the floor, with music When the music went faster, the boys moved around the paper and made large marks; they lay down and made smaller pictures when music was quieter and slower.
Message boxes were often used independently, and encouraged writing for different purposes - letters, messages, invitations, lists, postcards.
A dragon hunt with handprints leading to a dragon in a cave, where there were writing and drawing tools, tiny clipboards and scribblers The children liked to walk around with them in their hands, in pockets or clipped on to their clothes. They liked to hide away with them, to keep secrets, or magic their secrets away using the scribblers.
OBSERVATIONS: MEET THE BOYS
Ollie is four years old and in a reception class:
'I don't know what to play with, it's all fun.' He goes to the Lego box and starts making a model. 'It's a space rocket what can drive and when there's a train what's in danger and the train jumps on the track and the person can go in it. Then the train goes down back to earth, 'cos someone's shot the train up to space. And the train didn't like it. And the person saved it up in space. There's some fire under the wheels and the fire gets hotter and hotter and when the person counts up to six it blasts off and it stays up for 30 minutes and then goes down straight away.'
Frank is three years old and playing in the role-play building site at playgroup. An adult goes over to join his play.
Adult: 'Back in your office?'
Frank: 'Yeh.'
Adult: 'Got any appointments today?'
Frank: 'Work.' He picks up a brick to use as a telephone, and speaks with a deep 'grown-up' voice: 'Got to order it in. My car broke down. It's got a hole and broke its wheels. You got to order it in. Or out. You do it. Me going in my office. Me got to do my work.'
Adult: 'Well, I'll order the cement then.' She picks up the phone. 'What time will it be here?'
Frank: '18, 13.'
He puts a straw in his mouth, then orders sweets and cigarettes on the brick phone. A few minutes later he picks up a brick and scans some mark-making that he has done in a diary: 'dooooooooooooo doooooo doooooo doooo.'
Jack and Leo, both aged five years, are playing in the sand with small-world characters and ladders in their reception class.
Jack: 'The man and the boy went for a walk and they met a crocodile. The crocodile went snap - go snap, Leo, go snap, Leo - and they ran away as quickly as they could, there wasn't another ladder. There was a ladder for the man and the terrible teeth and the terrible claws and terrible jaws, and their favourite food was terrible fox and terrible teeth ... Oh help, oh no, it's a gruffalo ...! I'm the scariest creature in this wood. Everybody is afraid of me. Well, said the gruffalo bursting with laughter ...' (Jack carried on with more of the story, then ...) 'The crocodile is walking with this in his mouth. He's eaten all the treasure up because he's a very naughty crocodile. He's even going to eat my friend Leo!'
Leo: 'NO!' (mock fear) Jack roared.
