Writing secret notes in class was one of my pastimes as a teenager. I got caught once. Unfortunately, it was by the headteacher (who was teaching us at the time) and I was sent to stand outside her office, with my rough book as evidence and my co-writer, Kimberley Hewitt.
Kim always had juicy gossip to share. I don’t remember what that day’s note-exchanges were about, but I do remember a slogan badge she used to wear on her blazer, ‘Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.’
As we waited for our punishment, I had the bright idea of surreptitiously tearing out the incriminating pages and rewriting our notes as innocently as possible:
‘What did you get for Q3?’ ...
‘Well done! I can see you did your homework!’...
‘I didn’t really understand the bit about …, did you?’
The plan worked like a dream and, as the one who didn’t already hold a reputation around the school, I escaped with nothing more than a mild caution, advising me to ask openly for help in the future.
Since starting up as a one-to-one literacy teacher, I have rediscovered the power of written conversations. I’ve found they can be an excellent way to quickly engage reluctant children with reading and writing. With thoughtful word choices, I can ensure my writing is accessible to the individual child. Best of all, written conversations are full of opportunities to model writing behaviours. Just as a parent echoes a young child’s speech, repeating words and modelling their correct pronunciation, the writing adult can model correct spelling.
In the example below, you can see how this happened with ‘werds’/’words’.
Kim always had juicy gossip to share. I don’t remember what that day’s note-exchanges were about, but I do remember a slogan badge she used to wear on her blazer, ‘Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.’
As we waited for our punishment, I had the bright idea of surreptitiously tearing out the incriminating pages and rewriting our notes as innocently as possible:
‘What did you get for Q3?’ ...
‘Well done! I can see you did your homework!’...
‘I didn’t really understand the bit about …, did you?’
The plan worked like a dream and, as the one who didn’t already hold a reputation around the school, I escaped with nothing more than a mild caution, advising me to ask openly for help in the future.
Since starting up as a one-to-one literacy teacher, I have rediscovered the power of written conversations. I’ve found they can be an excellent way to quickly engage reluctant children with reading and writing. With thoughtful word choices, I can ensure my writing is accessible to the individual child. Best of all, written conversations are full of opportunities to model writing behaviours. Just as a parent echoes a young child’s speech, repeating words and modelling their correct pronunciation, the writing adult can model correct spelling.
In the example below, you can see how this happened with ‘werds’/’words’.
When we came to the final sentence, I gave my Y2 pupil a little nudge by opening the speech marks for her. Then she took over. The child asked for help with the spelling ‘all’. I felt confident this word was in her writing vocabulary (after practising it many times before), so gave a quick ‘You try!’ prompt. After a momentary pause she rattled off the word with a flourish. I stepped in again as she started to write the final ‘words’. Aware of the possibility of her repeating her earlier error (‘werds’), I prompted her to search for my spelling, which she did with no further support.
My young student was able to read my text with almost complete independence. She paused at ‘any’, segmented /a/ - /n/ - /ee/, then used the context of the sentence to correct her attempt. She needed help with ‘talk’ - her initial attempt was 'tell'. I swiftly finger-framed ‘al’, told her ‘In this word, these letters spell /or/.’, and she did the rest ('/t/ - /or/ - /k/', ‘talk’).
This was our first written conversation, so I’m not overly concerned about her one word responses at this stage. They showed me she had understood and engaged with my writing, which is a big tick in my book.
My young student was able to read my text with almost complete independence. She paused at ‘any’, segmented /a/ - /n/ - /ee/, then used the context of the sentence to correct her attempt. She needed help with ‘talk’ - her initial attempt was 'tell'. I swiftly finger-framed ‘al’, told her ‘In this word, these letters spell /or/.’, and she did the rest ('/t/ - /or/ - /k/', ‘talk’).
This was our first written conversation, so I’m not overly concerned about her one word responses at this stage. They showed me she had understood and engaged with my writing, which is a big tick in my book.