Whole School Book - information again

This email came from Mrs Bartlett towards the end of term - but I know there were a lot of emails, so I thought it would be helpful to post the contents of the email, in case your child is interested in writing something for our whole school book! Here's the original email information. Mrs Rennison

 

 

Good morning,

 

One of the things that many parents have raised during lockdown is that their children have been reluctant to write.  In school we find that children are always more motivated to write when there is a clear reason for their writing - the idea of a purpose and audience seems to make a real difference to them.  Therefore when we came across the idea of publishing a whole school book, we thought it might be a way of encouraging the children to do a bit of writing over the summer, and a chance to make some money for the school - something you know I am always keen on because then I can spend it on our children!

 

The idea is that any child who wants to, can write something to be included in the book - we are seeing this as a creating a permanent record, or time capsule, of this strange situation, but this does not limit what the children can write! it could be a recount of something you have done during lockdown that they enjoyed, a favourite recipe of something they have cooked during lockdown, a description of their pet and its escapades during lockdown (or just a description!), or a story about anything - or anything that they are inspired to write.  The book is then published - it's a real book! - and friends and family can buy a copy - we thought the book would make a lovely Christmas present for family members!

 

Further information, including examples of books other schools have created can be seen at:

 

https://writers.scholastic.co.uk/

 

If your child would like to write something to be included in our book, they need to decide on what they want to write and then produce their piece of writing. Please ensure that the work is your children's and do not give them too much help!  This is an opportunity for them to be a published author!  If your child wants to take part, discuss thoughts and ideas with them and encourage them to plan and think through what they want to include and identify effective words and phrases to include in their writing, but then let them write it themselves.  When they have finished, encourage them to read through it and check it makes sense and edit and improve it.  In school we encourage the older children to use thesauruses and dictionaries to help with this process. Please do not feel that every spelling has to be correct, especially for our younger children. Phonetically plausible spellings e.g. 'speshal' for 'special', 'worter' for 'water', can be read and understood and is using the skills that we teach our younger learners, before they have the capacity to retain a large volume of spellings. Please be aware that they can not include pictures or diagrams as part of their writing.

 

The finished piece of writing needs to be emailed to me as a word document. We would suggest that parents type up younger children's writing (retaining their spellings if they can be understood, as above!), wheras older children may prefer to type straight away rather than write, although this can sometimes restrict the creative process so typing up afterwards may still be the better option. 

 

When it is ready to go, please email it to me at headteacher@st-martins.hants.sch.uk and so long as we get enough pieces of writing to make it worthwhile, we will organise having the book published in September!  If your child is in Year 6, we would still love them to be involved in this and I will ensure that we include you in any communication about it next term.

 

I hope this all makes sense and is something that inspires our children to do some writing over the summer.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

 

Take care

 

Mrs Bartlett