Thread by @Positivteacha

🧵IMPROVING BOYS WRITING 🧵

I've taught a lot of boys a lot of writing over the years. Here's a few tips to get boys writing, better.

1. THE DOT

Research has shown that those things that are conducive to academic success- hard work, perseverance, organisation - are seen by students as inherently female traits, and as such, the reverse is true for boys.

This - along with the idea that English is a ‘girly subject’ - could explain why many boys struggle to get going when it comes to writing.

As Mark Roberts explains in Boys Don’t Try, ‘the dot’ can be a useful tool in holding boys to account.

You simply put a dot in the margin at the point where a boy is up to. Tell him, ‘I’ll be back in five minutes’ and see where you’ve got to. This can help reluctant writers to write a little more than they otherwise would.

I use ‘the dot’ a little differently...

...I put a dot in the margin of the line I want a boy to get to. This means I can change the parameters based on student, time of day, difficulty of task etc. Also, this has the other benefit of being completely low stakes - the only person the boy is in competition with is hiim

2. ADJUST MY EXPECTATIONS

I read (somewhere I’ve forgotten) that boys’ creative writing is often looked upon scornfully by teachers because of the immature subject matter. So whilst girls are writing intricate and nuanced stories about the human condition...

...boys are still writing about scoring last minute penalties, or fighting space aliens, or massive explosions.

I remember a chat with a former head about a boy’s piece of creative writing. It was about a man changing into an alien, and I said the piece of work wasn’t very good.

The head, who was previously a head of English, asked me, ‘What if the remit was to write a piece of sci-fi? Would you still say it was bad?’ The answer was no. As a piece of writing it was good, but I’d failed to recognise it because of my own snobbery about 'good lit'.

So next time you read a story in which a student is writing about blowing up bad guys as he flies out a burning building - ask yourself. If the remit was ‘write an action story’ what would you grade it?

That being said…I also

3. SET PARAMETERS

Sometimes I do want kids to write away from what they know and like. In the interests of diversity and acceptance, but also scaffolding and providing structure, I like to occasionally set a few rules...

For example, imagine the task ‘Write a story about a time you felt scared’. I might tell students that they must:

1. Name a character using a name from the country your parent(s) were born

2. Describe the way a character is feeling without naming the emotion they are feeling...

3. Include a moment where a male character is kind to another male character.

One more to go everybody...

4. LIVE MODEL

WAGOLLs don’t work. Remember my duck a’lorange analogy?

https://x.com/positivteacha/status/1747313742197526772?s=46

Instead, show kids how writing is created, by writing a story in front of them. Articulate your thought processes. Get things wrong. Make spelling errors. Ask kids to help you. Cross things out...

...Get them to copy everything you’re doing and then tell them you want them to cross out the third sentence, drawn an asterisk and replace it with something you think works better below.

You want the kids’ exercise books to look full of messy drafting. Because this shows kids that What a Good One REALLY Looks Like. It doesn’t come as a result of clicking the space bar. A good one actually comes about through a process of editing and drafting and making mistakes.

This is particularly useful for boys, whom are told they have to be the best at everything, and will willing self-sabotage at tasks where they feel they’ll be mocked or looked down upon for making mistakes.

Hope all this helps!

P.S. Also works with girls

Best,

Matt

*boys' writing