Chris Youles - how to teach story writing - Taipei
In this episode, I’m taking to Chris Youles. Chris has experience being an assistant head, english lead, writing moderator, and a specialist leader in primary education. He is also a published author having penned: Sentence models for creative writing: A practical resource for teaching writing and more recently Teaching Story Writing in Primary: Curriculum-aligned, classroom-ready resources and strategies.
It was regarding this latter book that i reached out to Chris for a chat, knowing that just like his first book, the more recent one would be packed full with practical insights that I could go about implementing in class as soon as possible.
We discuss:
1. Given that the vast majority of the book would be pertinent for my Y10 and 11 IGCSE cohorts, why did Chris go with 'Primary' in the title
2. What does he make of Joe Nutt's observation that there is a vanishingly small number of students who will actually go on to be writers and therefore, time spent in the English classroom might be better spent on more practical or relevant modes of communication
3. What are the constituent concepts that we can break story down to and introduce across the curriculum
4. Why plotting is described as the most difficult aspect of planning or writing a story
5. When Chris thinks classes or students can embark on truly independent writing
6. And finally, Chris’ advice for best practice around student sourced ambitious vocabulary
Thanks a lot to Chris for the taking the time to talk with me as well as writing yet another excellent book about not just the how of expressing yourself through writing, but the why too. Keep an eye out for his next publication too: Sentence models for non-fiction writing
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