Help Young Learners Beat the Blank Page
Their 'talk for writing' is fab... so why do they struggle to commit their words to paper?
While delivering a string of teacher development workshops in the weeks around World Book Day 2024, I noticed some common themes emerging across the Q&A portions. So for the rest of this World Book Month, this Substack will open those conversations for all…
I’m starting this series with by far the most common issue raised, which could be paraphrased something like this:
“How can we help them get their ideas onto the page? They often have great ideas when you’re talking to them, or they’re talking to each other, but as soon as they have to write them… that’s when the problems start.”
Talk for Writing… Talk:Write… Storytelling Schools… The prevalence of these fantastic schemes (and they are fantastic, in many ways) seems to suggest it’s common sense for oracy to be the gateway to writing.
Yet what I picked up from the majority of schools I visited for this year’s World Book Day celebrations – and indeed what I tend to discover from most of my school visits period – is that many learners, from 5 to 18, still struggle to find the right words to place on the page. Why is that? And what can be done about it?
I’m not a scientist, so I can only guess at the why. Pretty much every other subject in school, certainly up to age 16, we teach learners to expect a ‘right answer’. By age 11, most English learners will know around 20,000 words, many of which are synonyms, and all of which can be combined in seemingly limitless ways.
The problem isn’t a lack of imagination. It’s having to choose the ‘right’ answer from infinity.
I could be wrong about the cause, but my solution has been successful in literally all schools and/or tutoring assignments I’ve used it – and that is?
Help learners feel good about their choice of words before they approach the blank page.
As with my work on helping learners begin reading for pleasure, helping them “feel good” isn’t achieved by just telling them they should feel that way. They need to feel that pleasure for themselves, and then good writing will follow.
We learn to feel good about our choice of words when we see others enjoying them. There are several ways you can help learners to experience this, but here’s a simple activity that’s one of the quickest and the best.
I’ve run this activity with groups of all ages from 5 and up – and yup, that includes teachers, professional writers, sales teams, etc. It can work with any kind of content your learners have yet to write – for example, real-life stories, stories they’ve heard, stories they’ve made up, letters to send, etc – but crucially, the content must already be in creation.
That point bears emphasising: this is not an activity for creating a story, a report, letter content, etc. However you plan for them to get the content, do that first – be it using prompts, story maps, telling the story for them to retell, etc.
But before you give them their blank page, do this:
Sit your group in pairs. NB: If your group has an odd number, it’s better for them to pair with the facilitator than make a trio. (If you’re providing one-to-one tuition, pair up with your tutee.)
Use whatever means you wish to decide who is ‘No.1’ and ‘No.2’ (my favourite is to say, “Whoever in your pair is sitting the closest to me, you are Number 1.”).No.1 begins telling their story (or report, letter content, whatever) to their No.2, one sentence at a time.
At the end of each sentence, No.2 gets to say either “Yes” to show they liked the sentence, or “No, try again” if they didn’t.
If they say “Yes,” No.1 moves onto the next sentence.
If they say “No, try again,” No.1 must find a new sentence to share the same information.Keep going for a set time (2–3min is usually enough), then swap roles.
If possible, after No.2 has been the orator, move the No.1s around so they each have a new partner, then repeat the process.
If working in one-to-one tuition, after you’ve taken a turn as the orator, let your tutee have another go.At the very end, ask your learners to raise their hand if they got further through their story the second time around. You don’t need to comment on the result, it’s just to satiate your interest – but you should find that, nearly every time, the majority put their hand up.
Note: It’s important to model this activity first, especially if you use a similar exercise for story creation, so you can emphasise that the information always stays the same – it’s only the words that change.
Here’s an example you can use to model, with a No.1 telling Cinderella to a No.2…
No.1: “There was once a poor orphan girl called Cinderella.”
No.2: “Yes.”
No.1: “Her mother dying was bad enough, but when her dad died she was left living with her stepmother and stepsisters.”
No.2: “Yes.”
No.1: “The stepsisters were probably the ugliest people alive.”
No.2: “No, try again…”
Now at this point, No.1 could not say something like, “Suddenly, an alien spaceship flew down and captured Cinderella, whisking her off to a strange and distant planet…” That would be a whole different story. No.1 has just said that the stepsisters were ugly, so they need to rephrase that sentence somehow – maybe…
No.1: “Cinderella’s stepsisters were so ugly, even their mirrors would turn around in disgust.”
No.2: “No, try again…”
That’s right: if No.2 still doesn’t like the sentence, they can repeat their “No, try again” – and No.1 has to try yet another variation – such as…
No.1: “The stepsisters looked like two dirty handkerchiefs had spent ten years festering at the bottom of a dog poo bin, before sprouting arms and legs and learning to speak.”
No.2: “Yes!”
…at which point No.1 can finally move to the next sentence.
What’s Going On?
Way more often than not, learners get further through their story with their second partner. Why? Because they’re naturally beginning to take note of what works to entertain the person in front of them.
In other words, they’re discovering that communication is a two-way street – the signals they detect from their audience can help them choose the best words to say.
And now they know what phrases work…
Give them that blank page! When you ask them now to write the best version of their story/report/etc, they’ll know exactly what to jot down. $;-)
I’d love to know how you get on with this activity! Or, if there’s another area of literacy your learners are struggling with, perhaps that could be a future topic for one of these posts? Either way, please…
