Inspiring a Writing Community

I have started this year with a commitment to develop literacy through reading and writing. I dedicate the start of every lesson to ten minutes silent reading. Sometimes I listen to the learners read, sometimes I ask them to tell me about their reading. Read about this in my post, Inspiring a Reading Community.

We also write for fifteen to twenty minutes each lesson. This writing is done in a separate book to their lesson work. It is an opportunity to explore and play with language and is a chance to write what they want to write. Read about how I set this up and where I got my inspiration in my post, Spilling Ink.

Each lesson they are given the option to:

- write something they need to write about

- re-work or continue with something they have previously written

- use the writing prompt.

I provide a new writing prompt each week - and they can write a poem, a list, a story, a letter, a speech, a script - whatever they want.

Some prompts I have used so far this year are:-

Read about my adventures last year, with Rip the Page, which I hope to continue to explore this year.

In the past, I have also used music, art or video to inspire and prompt. This morning I was exploring Vimeo and found this wonderfully simple yet incredibly clever little animation. This is going to be my prompt for this week... I hope it inspires some interesting and thoughtful writing.

Umbra (HD - 2010) from Malcolm Sutherland on Vimeo.