Everybody Writes is a universal approach to writing, encouraging a love of writing for all children and increasing the confidence of teachers by devising original and creative ways to engage children in writing. However, by offering children hands-on experiences to write about and by establishing real audiences for children’s writing, the Everybody Writes approach imbues writing with a relevance and immediacy that makes this approach particularly effective in engaging the interest of reluctant writers, as well as giving the most able writers the opportunity to shine.
The four key principles of the project are:
- Taking writing beyond the classroom: into the playground, community and world of work
- Giving children hands-on experiences to write about
- Finding real audiences for children's writing
- Exploring writing across the curriculum
An Everybody Writes project could involve staging the discovery of dinosaur bones in the playground to trigger a whole-school newspaper writing project, running a series of after-school workshops for parents and children to write and illustrate a family history book, or setting up a lunchtime blogging club to track the progress of a favourite football team in the Premier League.
